Note 208-5 — Chapter I

In Moscow, merchants close their accounts at Easter. Then begins a new cycle of fashions, after which all that remains is sold at mock-prices. (Kohl, Reise, 98.) In Paris, there are houses which buy up everything as it begins to go out of fashion and then send it into the provinces and to foreign parts. Thus, there are immense amounts of old clothing shipped from France and England to Ireland. Hence, the latter country can have no national costume appropriate to the different classes; and the traveler sees with regret, crowds of Irish going to work in ragged frock-coats, short trowsers and old silk hats. In Prussia, many of the peasantry, in the time of Frederick the Great, wore the discarded uniforms of the soldiery.