By 1800, the influence of national features in dress, in decline throughout the previous age, have become negligible.
The character of the feminine wardrobe now stems from Paris, the masculine from London.
"{Readers} take infinitely more pleasure in knowing the variety of incidents that are contained in them, without ever thinking of imitating them, believing the imitation not only difficult, but impossible: as if heaven, the sun, the elements, and men should have changed the order of their motions and power, from what they were anciently"