United States or Slovakia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The good man, who used to wear the beau drop d'Angleterre, quite plain all the year round, with a long bob, or tye perriwig, must here provide himself with a camblet suit trimmed with silver for spring and autumn, with silk cloaths for summer, and cloth laced with gold, or velvet for winter; and he must wear his bag-wig a la pigeon.

There were, however, sentries on duty, and a few seamen belonging to men of war; or merchantmen of various nations would pass by; and here and there a cowled priest, a woman in the dark faldetta, a ragged beggar boy or an old gentleman in three-cornered hat, a bag-wig, riding on a donkey, with a big red cotton umbrella over his head, would appear from one of the neighbouring streets, as necessity called him forth.

"He was fond," says one of his contemporaries, "of exhibiting his muscular little person in the gayest apparel of the day, to which was added a bag-wig and sword." Thus arrayed, he used to figure about in the sunshine in the Temple Gardens, much to his own satisfaction, but to the amusement of his acquaintances. Boswell, in his memoirs, has rendered one of his suits forever famous.

'Aye, sir, when you have your bag-wig and your gown on, we must allow you the usual privilege of both gown and petticoat, to ask what questions you please. But when you are out of your canonicals, the case is altered.

Again we hold the Jessamy Bride responsible for this gorgeous splendor of wardrobe. The new wig no doubt is a bag-wig and solitaire, still highly the mode, and in which Goldsmith is represented as figuring when in full dress, equipped with his sword.

Dudley, in similar costume, was attended by Philip Donaldson, who looked a perfect gentleman of the Sir Charles Grandison style in his full dress, with bag-wig and sword.

It was a small, but pleasant apartment, opening to the south, and hung with tapestry; adorned besides with two pictures, one of her mother, in the dress of a shepherdess, with a bell-hoop; the other of the Baron, in his tenth year, in a blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, laced hat, and bag-wig, with a bow in his hand.

Baffo walks beside us in hypocritical composure of bag-wig and senatorial dignity, whispering unmentionable sonnets in his dialect of Xe and Ga. Somehow or another that last dotage of S. Mark's decrepitude is more recoverable by our fancy than the heroism of Pisani in the fourteenth century. Pietro Doria boasted that with his own hands he would bridle the bronze horses of S. Mark.

But though Goldsmith might permit this raillery on the part of his friends, he was quick to resent any personalities of the kind from strangers. As he was one day walking the Strand in grand array with bag-wig and sword, he excited the merriment of two coxcombs, one of whom called to the other to "look at that fly with a long pin stuck through it."

The Angel collected himself: "Tell me," he murmured, "which of the grey-haired ones is the judge?" "He in the bag-wig, sir," returned his dragoman; "and that little lot is the jury," he added, indicating twelve gentlemen seated in two rows. "What is their private life?" asked the Angel.