It has survived the blasts of
many centuries and infinite changes of fashion. It is, I suppose, the most
ancient survival in the dress that men wear. There is in the Froissart
collection at the British Museum an illumination (dating from the fifteenth
century) showing the expedition of the French and English against the
Barbary corsairs. And there seated in the boats are men clad in armour.
They have put their helmets aside and are wearing top-hats! And it may be
that when Macaulay's New Zealander, centuries hence, takes his seat on that
broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's, he will sit
under the shelter of a top-hat that has out-lasted all our greatness.
There must be some virtue in a thing that is so immortal. If the doctrine
of the survival of the fittest applies to dress, it is the fittest thing we
have. Trousers are a thing of yesterday with us, but our top-hat carries us
back to the Wars of the Roses and beyond. It is not its beauty that
explains it. I have never heard any one deny that it is ugly, though custom
may have blunted our sense of its ugliness.
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