into the country in coffins, and it is said that £6,000 worth of foreign lace was discovered hidden in the coffin of a certain man who died in Paris, which speaks well for the vigilance exercised by the Customs officers on the English coast. Lace was as popular with men as with women, forming as it did an important part of their dress. Thus we find Horace Walpole discussing the merits of lace with a friend in terms of the deepest interest. "I have chosen you a coat of claret colour," he writes, "but I have fixed nothing about the lace. Barrett had none of gauze but what was as broad as the Irish Channel. Your tailor found a very reputable one at another place, but I would not determine rashly; it will be two or three and twenty shillings the yard; you might have a very substantial real lace for twenty." It is impossible to conceive such a correspondence between two men in these days. The wigs, worn religiously by men and boys till the middle of the century, now began to disappear; men of fashion allowed their hair to grow long, tied it in a pig-tail or queue, and dressed it in front with a curl on either side of the head. The hair was worn powdered till 1795, when Pitt levied a tax of a
