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CHAP. XI.] violently opposed, nor has the opposition wholly died out even yet. The Lancet, in 1879, said, "We consider this article of dress unnecessary, and in many ways detrimental to health and morals." The Lancet had apparently taken leave of its senses for once, unless a too-zealous compositor turned what was intended as an affirmative sentence into a negative one: for the majority of physicians will, I am confident, hold with me that the absence of proper covering to the lower limbs is detrimental to health and morals. It was again in a strain of old-fashioned intolerance that, writing on the Rational Dress question in 1883, the same journal remarked, "That monstrosity of fashion the divided skirt is an outrage not to be countenanced—an unnatural costume which must be productive of unwomanly ways which are to be deprecated. Moreover, as it approaches the trouser in form and in use, it must engender an increase in the heat of the body which is most undesirable." It is a pity that so excellent and high an authority as the Lancet should have stooped to express such hasty and evidently ill-considered opinions. It seems probable from the above that the writer had never even seen a divided skirt, and he was certainly ignorant of the plan and purpose of its construction.

The general adoption of drawers as an article of dress was due to a freak of fashion. When, owing to Royal example, the fashion of distending the skirts with hoops was universally adopted alike by princess and peasant girl, this distension