ed upon matters of more general concern) is become honourable, and the refusal to engage in it ignominious. In these our royal cares and inquiries, we are yet further made to understand, that the persons of most eminent worth, and most hopeful abilities, accompanied with the strongest passion for true glory, are such.as are most liable to be involved in the dangers arising from this license. Now taking the said premises into our serious consideration, and well weighing that all such emergencies (wherein the mind is incapable of commanding itself, and where the injury is too sudden or too exquisite to be borne) are particularly provided for by laws heretofore enacted; and that the qualities of less injuries, like those of ingratitude, are too nice and delicate to come under general rules; we do resolve to blot this fashion, or wantonness of anger, out of the minds of our subjects, by our royal resolutions declared in this edict as follow:

'No person who either sends or accepts a challenge, or the posterity of either, though no death ensues thereupon, shall be, after the publication of this our edict, capable of bearing office in these our dominions.

The person who shall prove the sending or receiving a challenge, shall receive to his own use and property the whole personal estate of both parties; and their real estate shall be immediately vested in the next heir of the offenders in as ample manner as if the said offenders were açtually deceased.

"In cases where the laws (which we have already granted to our subjects) admit of an appeal for blood; when the criminal is condemned by

the said appeal, he shall not suffer death, but his whole estate, real, mixed, and personal, shall from the hour of his death, be vested in the next heir of the person whose blood he spilt.

'That it shall not hereafter be in our royal power, or that of our successors, to pardon the said offences, or restore the offenders in their estates, honour, or blood for ever.

'Given at our court at Blois, the 8th of February 420, in the second year of our reign.' T.

No. 98. FRIDAY, JUNE 22. By Addison.

-Tanta est quærendi cura decoris.

So studiously their persons they adorn.

Juv. SAT.

THERE is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress: within my own memory I have known it rise and fall above thirty degrees. About ten years ago it shot up to a very great height, insomuch that the female part of our species were much taller than the men. (a) The women were of such an enormous stature, that we appeared as grasshoppers before them. At present the whole sex is in a manner dwarfed and shrunk into a race of beauties that seems almost another species. I remember several ladies, who were once very near seven feet high, that at present want some inches of five. How they came to be thus curtailed I can not learn, whether the whole sex be at present under any penance which we know nothing of, or whether they have cast their head-dresses in order to surprise us with some

thing in that kind which shall be entirely new; or whether some of the tallest of the sex, being too cunning for the rest, have contrived this method to make themselves appear sizeable, is still a secret; though I find most are of opinion, they are at present like trees new lopped and pruned, that will certainly sprout up and flourish with greater heads than before. For my own part as I do not love to be insulted by women who are taller than myself, I admire the sex much more in their present humiliation, which has reduced them to their natural dimensions, than when they had extended their persons and lengthened themselves out into formidable and gigantic figures. I am not for adding to the beautiful edifices of nature, nor for raising any whimsical superstructure upon her plans; I must therefore repeat it, that I am highly pleased with the coiffure now in fashion, and think it shows the good sense which at present very much reigns among the valuable part of the sex. One may observe that women in all ages have taken more pains than men to adorn the outside of their heads; and indeed I very much admire that those female architects who raise such wonderful structures out of ribands, lace, and wire, have not been recorded for their respective inventions. It is certain there have been as many orders in these kinds of building as in those which have been made of marble; sometimes they rise in the shape of a pyramid, sometimes like a tower, and sometimes like a steeple. In Juvenal's time, the building grew by several orders and stories, as he has very humorously described it.

Tot premit ordinibus, tot adhuc compagibus altum
Edificat caput: Andromachen a fronte videbis;
Post minor est: aliam credas-

JUV. SAT.

With curls on curls they build their heads before,
And mount it with a formidable tow'r;

A giantess she seems, but look behind,

And then she dwindles to the pigmy kind. DRYDEN.

But I do not remember, in any part of my reading, that the head-dress aspired to so great an extravagance as in the fourteenth century; when it was built up in a couple of cones or spires, which stood so excessively high on each side of the head, that a woman, who was but a pigmy without her head-dress, appeared like a Colossus upon putting it on. Monsieur Paradin (b) says, 'that these old fashioned fontanges rose an ell above the head; that they were pointed like steeples, and had long loose pieces of crape fastened to the tops of them, which were curiously fringed, and hung down their backs like

streamers.

The women might possibly have carried this Gothic building much higher, had not a famous monk, Thomas Conecte by name, attacked it with great zeal and resolution. This holy man travelled from place to place to preach down this monstrous commode; and succeeded so well in it, that as the magicians sacrificed their books to the flames upon the preaching of an apostle, many of the women threw down their headdresses in the middle of his sermon, and made a bonfire of them within sight of the pulpit. He was so renowned, as well for the sanctity of his. life as his manner of preaching, that he had often a congregation of twenty thousand people; the

men placing themselves on the one side of his pulpit, and the women on the other, that appeared (to use the similitude of an ingenious writer) like a forest of cedars with their heads reaching to the clouds. He so warmed and animated the people against this monstrous ornament that it lay under a kind of persecution; and, whenever it appeared in public was pelted down by the rabble, who flung stones at the person that wore it. But notwithstanding this prodigy vanished while the preacher was among them, it began to appear again some months after his departure, or to tell it in Monsieur Paradin's own words, 'the women that like snails in a fright, had drawn in their horns, shot them out again as soon as the danger was over.' This extravagance of the women's head-dresses in that age is taken notice of by Monsieur d'Argentre in his history of Bretagne, and by other historians, as well as the person I have here quoted. (c)

It is usually observed, that a good reign is the only proper time for making of laws against the exorbitance of power: in the same manner an excessive head-dress may be attacked the most effectually when the fashion is against it. I do therefore recommend this paper to my female readers by way of prevention.

I would desire the fair sex to consider how impossible it is for them to add any thing that can be ornamental to what is already the master-piece of nature. The head has the most beautiful appearance, as well as the highest station in a hùman figure. Nature has laid out all her art in beautifying the face; she has touched it with vermillion, planted in it a double row of ivory,