Note 7 — LETTER LVIII.

Now as the dress regulations of the St. George’s Company will be quite as much for the pride of the maid as the mistress, and of the man as the master, I have no fear but they will be found acceptable, and require no strictness of enforcement. The children of peasants, though able to maintain their own families, will be required to be as clean as if they were charity-boys or girls; nobody will be allowed to wear the cast clothes of other people, to sell or pawn their own, or to appear on duty, agricultural or whatever other it may be, in rags, any more than the Horse Guards or the Queen’s dairy-maids are now; also on certain occasions, and within such limits as are needful for good fellowship, they will be urged to as much various splendour as they can contrive. The wealth of the peasant women will be chiefly in hereditary golden ornaments of the finest workmanship; and in jewellery of uncut gems—agates only, or other stones of magnitude, being allowed to be cut, and gems of large size, which are worth the pains, for their beauty; but these will be chiefly used in decorative architecture or furniture, not in dress. The dress of the officers of the Company will be on all occasions plainer than that of its peasants; but hereditary nobles will retain all the insignia of their rank, the one only condition of change required on their entering the St. George’s Company being the use of uncut jewels, and therefore—seldom of diamonds.7