of the Seniors shall have frogs to the button-holes of the cuffs.  The buttons upon the coats of all the classes shall be as near the color of the coats as they can be procured, or of a black color.  And no student shall appear within the limits of the College, or town of Cambridge, in any other dress than in the uniform belonging to his respective class, unless he shall have on a night-gown or such an outside garment as may be necessary over a coat, except only that the Seniors and Juniors are permitted to wear black gowns, and it is recommended that they appear in them on all public occasions.  Nor shall any part of their garments be of silk; nor shall they wear gold or silver lace, cord, or edging upon their hats, waistcoats, or any other parts of their clothing.  And whosoever shall violate these regulations shall be fined a sum not exceeding ten shillings for each offence.”—­Laws of Harv.  Coll., 1790, pp. 36, 37.

It is to this dress that the poet alludes in these lines:—­

 “In blue-gray coat, with buttons on the cuffs,
  First Modern Pride your ear with fustian stuffs;
 ’Welcome, blest age, by holy seers foretold,
  By ancient bards proclaimed the age of gold,’” &c.[22]

But it was by the would-be reformers of that day alone that such sentiments were held, and it was only by the severity of the punishment attending non-conformity with these regulations that they were ever enforced.  In 1796, “the sumptuary law relative to dress had fallen into neglect,” and in the next year “it was found so obnoxious and difficult to enforce,” says Quincy, “that a law was passed abrogating the whole system of distinction by ’frogs on the cuffs and button-holes,’ and the law respecting dress was limited to prescribing a blue-gray or dark-blue coat, with permission to wear a black gown, and a prohibition of wearing gold or silver lace, cord, or edging.”—­Quincy’s Hist.  Harv.  Univ., Vol.  II. p. 277.

A writer in the New England Magazine, in an article relating to the customs of Harvard College at the close of the last century, gives the following description of the uniform ordered by the Corporation to be worn by the students:—­

“Each head supported a three-cornered cocket hat.  Yes, gentle reader, no man or boy was considered in full dress, in those days, unless his pericranium was thus surmounted, with the forward peak directly over the right eye.  Had a clergyman, especially, appeared with a hat of any other form, it would have been deemed as great a heresy as Unitarianism is at the present day.  Whether or not the three-cornered hat was considered as an emblem of Trinitarianism, I am not able to determine.  Our hair was worn in a queue, bound with black ribbon, and reached to the small of the back, in the shape of the tail of that motherly animal which furnishes ungrateful bipeds of the human race with milk, butter, and cheese.  Where nature had not bestowed a sufficiency of this ornamental appendage, the living and the dead contributed of their superfluity to supply the deficiency.  Our ear-locks,—­horresco referens!—­my ears tingle and my countenance is distorted at the recollection of the tortures inflicted on them by the heated curling-tongs and crimping-irons.