small indications of a reversal of heart and mind on the part of English society, than to describe the cataclysms by which they were accompanied.
Among the minor effects, there was no one which more strikingly affected the tone of society through all its grades, than the thoroughgoing dislocation of the old-fashioned modes of female attire, and the rapid substitution of costumes at once healthful, comfortable, and becoming. Our heroine was no longer a solitary pioneer, hewing her way bravely through a mass of obloquy; girls both younger and older than she were discarding their skirts and adopting, for everyday use, a knicker or tights costume, according to fancy, first for out-door exercises only, then for all exercises, in-door or out-door, then for evening as well as morning dress; and no remonstrances of old fogies of either sex could induce them to return, except for occasions of solemnity where the dignity of a robe was in place, to the condemned petticoats. This movement in the matter of dress quickly entailed another one, but of more limited application. Riding astride was encouraged by the institution of a ‘Ladies’ Bicycle Club’ and a ‘Ladies’ Reformed Horseback Association,’ which sprang into existence and flourished in the course of a single summer. Our heroine, and her friend Friga Hawknorbuzzard, here saw the fruits of an active propagandism at which they had worked with renewed zeal since the catastrophe of Queenstown; but their success might not have been so signal as it was, had their endeavours not been assisted by the recognised leaders of fashion, who had the wisdom to keep touch of the foremost innovations, and to lose no time in espousing the winning cause. Never did a fashion in dress spread more rapidly than this ‘anti-skirt movement,’ and a new impetus was given by it to every kind of healthy exercise. Lawns and fields presented scenes of feminine energy hitherto never
