1 NOVEMBER 1935, Page 6

* "Loitering with a vacant eye Along the Grecian gallery,"

—only it was • not the Grecian gallery but the National Gallery. I turned on Wednesday into the rooms devoted to the British School of the seventeenth and eighteenth. centuries and was , immediately set pondering on•trousers, For there was not a trouser in the plaee—I mean,: in'the frames". When did those ,unloyely, though not entirely cOmfortleSs, garments come in ? And by what eVolution'? Did the knee-breeches gradually creep down the calf ? Or was the revolution quite sudden ? All this is elementary' sartorial knowledge, probably, but it has its historical: interest. The man who first swathed his legs in two creased cylinders must have been an adventurer of the order of Columbus.

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