The foundation of this structure is a thing they call a _Bourle_ which is exactly of the same shape and kind, but about four times as big, as those rolls our prudent milk-maids make use of to fix their pails upon.

This machine they cover with their own hair, which they mix with a great deal of false, it being a particular beauty to have their heads too large to go into a moderate tub.

Their hair is prodigiously powdered, to conceal the mixture, and set out with three or four rows of bodkins (wonderfully large, that stick [out] two or three inches from their hair), made of diamonds, pearls, red, green, and yellow stones, that it certainly requires as much art and experience to carry the load upright, as to dance upon May-day with the garland.

Their whalebone petticoats outdo ours by several yards circumference, and cover some acres of ground.
"You may easily suppose how much this extraordinary dress sets off and improves the natural ugliness with which God Almighty has been pleased to endow them all generally.

Even the lovely Empress herself is obliged to comply, in some degree, with these absurd fashions, which they would not quit for all the world." The above passage is the more interesting because it has so often been asserted that Lady Mary took no interest in dress.