This is a grave question, for fops are like veal pies—in the opinion of the waggish Weller—the crust may be rather respectable, but the making up of the interior is “werry duberous.” Exquisites at this present writing, are a conglomeration of lanky legs, hairy heads and creamy countenances. Such are their natural peculiarities. But it is evident that in considering this subject, the great topic of inquiry is, What is a dandy sartorially? Here description will proclaim him to be a being stuck into tight trowsers, ditto coat and vest, ditto boots, not so much ditto overcoat, and crowned with a cylindrical structure of felt, which is called a hat. Mentally the subject of dandyism offers little field for remark, because the weakness which distinguishes the unfortunate class of our fellow citizens now under consideration, is caused by natural imbecility and want of common sense.

It is a topic of inquiry worthy of the most acute philosophical research whether buckishness is a natural or acquired folly. Some who have argued upon the matter have taken the ground, that all such vanities are the consequence of the great fall, and that as the expulsion from Eden was followed by the assumption of apparel, good Mother Eve was tempted and overcome by the fascinations of dress. For support of this view of the subject it may be urged, that with the fall came dress, with dress came fashion, and with fashion came the Dandy. Others suggest that such an argument as this, going back beyond the flood, is far-fetched, and they profess to be able to assign a much better cause for dandyism. According to these philosophers every fop has “a soft place in his head,” which has been very beautifully described by the poet as

They affirm that this weak portion of a skull otherwise thick, is the chosen place of the “organ of dandyism,” and controls the habits of its possessors. If this were so, we might pardon a failing which cannot be remedied, but, with Combe in our hands, we in vain run over the head to find this organ, which is certainly not a hand-organ. None of the phrenological authorities—it is a striking fact—give the locality of this bump.

No; “the milk of human kindness” which was “poured into Gall,” forbade him from making known the situation of the protuberance, and Fowler unfairly dodges the question.

Nothing is to be made out of this inquiry, and after considering the matter with great gravity, we are driven to the conclusion that Dandyism is like a bad cold, caught nobody knows how, or when, or where, or why. Some may be afflicted because they have the pores of vanity open—others who sit in the draught of affectation, may suddenly be seized by a fashionable influenza—going suddenly from the warm room of common sense into the cold air of ostentation, may give the “grippe” to some—but with many it is chronic, having been acquired in childhood when their dear mammas tricked them out in fantastic velvets and fine caps, with feathers, making them juvenile dandies among the little boys of their neighborhood.

But all this may be tiresome to the reader who desires to plunge at once in the middle of the subject. We must really get on with this important theme, and responding categorically to the inquiry, “how dandies are made?” respond: by eight honest mechanics, to wit, the tailor, hatter, boot-maker, linen-draper, haberdasher, glover, hosier and jeweler. Take away the articles fabricated by these men, what is he but a helpless mortal, a mere man and terribly unfashionable? We might once have added to the list of dandy manufacturers the barber—but our modern exquisites have so little to do with that artist that the claims of Figaro to the distinction would be strongly controverted.

An inspection of a buck in this month of February, anno domini eighteen hundred and fifty-two, will convey to the mind of the spectator ideas of a pair of very thin legs, surmounted by a very short specimen of an overcoat, with monstrous buttons and wide sleeves—a cravat with a bow about six inches wide and three inches broad, with fringes at the ends—a standing shirt collar, running up to a very sharp point—something like a face, covered with hair over what, in Christians, are the chin, cheek and upper-lip—and a hat thereon. Simile fails in ability to convey any adequate notion of this figure. Two pipes, bowl downward and stems upward, might give an idea of the lower extremity of the dandy. We will carry out the nicotian metaphor by placing on the upper portions of the stems a paper of “Mrs. Miller’s best”—the short-cut, oozing from the top of the torn paper, will do very well for the hair on the face—a tobacco-box placed on the whole, will give some idea of a figure, which, if greatly magnified, would in the outline much resemble a modern fop.

The clothing of an exquisite is a work of time and science. We can imagine how much of the labor is done. But there are two subjects, in the making of a fop, that have long been considered puzzles. One of these questions is—how does he manage to tie those huge bows in his cravat, which stand out just below his chin, giving him thereabout the appearance of a cherubim, all head and wings? What a work of fixing must there be before he gets the knot exactly right! What gazing into the mirror—what pulling of ends—what twisting of folds—what tying and untying! Every thing must be just so. There must be no wrinkles—all must be smooth and “ship-shape,” or the dandy so remiss upon this subject would be avoided forever by his associates. It has been asserted that a smart exquisite is able to tie his cravat in half an hour, but the general average of time is believed to be an hour and a half. There is a melancholy instance on record, of a fop who once took three hours to fix the bow of his cravat. The sad occurrence took place on what should have been his wedding-day. He commenced the work at seven o’clock in the morning and had “a nice knot” at ten. Unfortunately, the hour of the wedding was fixed at nine. The anxious intended wailed impatiently at the altar for her expected lord, for half an hour, and then concluding that he meant to insult her, went away in a huff, so that the unfortunate dandy, by being too particular as to tying a nice knot, lost the opportunity of fastening a nicer knot, and worse still, a bride “worth a hundred thousand.”

This inquiry into the time occupied at the cravat, though very interesting, must yield in importance to another, to wit:—How do dandies get into their boots?

In former years this puzzling topic could not have arisen. Loose trowsers gave plenty of room to boots which were wide in the legs. There was no difficulty in getting heels into them, and though there might have been some screwing and stamping, it was certain that eventually the articles would be drawn on the feet. Then, too, the tightness was only in the foot part of the boot. It required considerable muscular exertion to coax the five toes into the close prison designed for them, but by pulling one moment, working the foot the next, and then screwing the face into ugly contortions, considerable progress was usually effected. The power of the human countenance over upper leather is one of those extraordinary psychological facts which dabblers in animal magnetism have failed in accounting for satisfactorily. Yet that it does exist, is vouched for by all experience. Tight boots have always been susceptible to this influence. History herself cannot point to an instance where a new leathern foot-envelope was drawn on the walker with a countenance “calm as a summer’s morning.” It is notorious that no boot of character ever yielded until it saw, from the knitting of the eyebrows, the puckering of lips, and the distortion of muscles, that the putter-on was in absolute earnest. And how stubbornly the leather yields when it comes under the influence—how it relaxes with stiff dissatisfaction, and at last creeps over the part assigned, with an air of unwrinkled disgust. The philosophy of this subject is strange, and should be investigated by some modern Mesmer of sole and upper leather.

But really this is a digression, which the importance of the correlative subject has drawn us into. “Let us return to our—mutton.” (We might have said our veal, were it not that the idea of dandies’ legs and calves are incongruous and unnatural.) It is an inflexible rule in the making up of an exquisite, that there shall be no calves to his legs. The mere osteological peculiarities of that part of the frame are to be preserved, and the epidermis must clasp the attenuated limb, without embracing a superfluity of muscle similar to that which we see in the lower limbs of the statues of Hercules. Hence it follows that the heel of a true dandy is expected to protrude an inch at least beyond what, under happier circumstances, would be the calf of his leg. There is really no difference between the formation of the lower pedalities of a pure dandy, and those of a pure Ethiopian. In this anatomical fact lies the great difficulty in the way of modern “squirts.” The heel unfortunately requires a greater opening at the top of the boot than can be filled up by the upper part of the leg when the article is upon the foot. This is a very distressing difficulty. The pantaloons are expected to hug the leg as tightly as possible, so that the thinness of the “trotters” may be revealed in all their natural beauty. But an obstacle exists in the shape of an inch or two of superfluous leather at the top of the boot, which will have a tendency to give the limb an appearance of greater circumference than nature or fashion permits. This trouble is really of disgusting importance. How do the dandies manage, then, to produce those thin legs, the slightness of which is so strikingly graceful? The world has long wondered over this subject, and it was not until lately that a true philosopher revealed the mystery. He asserts that after fops get into boots and unmentionables, they turn up the latter until they get a fair purchase on the leather inconveniencies. Then, with broad bandages they swathe their legs and the upper part of their boots quite carefully, until the superfluous leather is bound tightly down, and there is a comparatively smooth surface all the way down the limb. After having got his trowsers pulled down, the fop is ready for a promenade upon Chestnut street, or a conquest in a drawing-room. In the former exercise he gets along as well as can be expected, being very careful in his mincing steps lest an unlucky rip should damage the integrity of his apparel. In the latter situation he is often put to great inconvenience. When sitting down, the unwhisperables are, by the disposition of his body, drawn a considerable distance above the ankle. To get them down again is a matter which no thorough dandy can accomplish. If he were to bend to do it, the consequence would be disastrous. He therefore takes his leave of the ladies with pantaloons half-way up to the knee, and, stopping in the entry, exclaims—“Wait-ah! wait-ah! hea-ah, fell-ah, assist me! Come hea-ah and pull down my pants! Really, ah, they-ah have risen until they are quite uncomfortable.”

Thus much for the present division of our task, from which we draw the deduction that every exquisite has his troubles like plainer people. One day he may be in agonies because his cravat is not decently tied. On another he may be in torture because, notwithstanding all his efforts, his legs seem thick. These and other ills are occasional misfortunes. It is not considered by him that although these griefs come once in a while, he is at all times in manners a puppy, and in mental strength only a ninny.

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BY CORNELIA B. BROWNE.

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OR THE TALBOTS IN TEVIOTDALE.

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BY FRANK FORESTER.

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[SEE ENGRAVING.]

“Tayho! Tayho!”^[1]

And straightway to the cry responded the long-drawn, mellow notes of the huge French-horns which were in those days used by every yeoman pricker, as the peculiar and time-honored instrument of the stag-hunt, the mots of which were as familiar to every hunter’s ear, as so many spoken words of his vernacular.

It was the gray dawn of a lovely summer morning in the latter part of July, and although the moor-cocks were crowing sharp and shrill from every rocky knoll or purple eminence of the wild moors, now waving far and wide with the redolent luxuriance of their amethyst garniture, for the heather was in its full flush of bloom, although the thrush and black-bird were caroling in emulous joy, at the very top of their voices, from every brake and thicket which feathered the wild banks of the hill-burns, the sun had not lifted a portion of his disc above the huge, round-topped fells which formed the horizon to the north and westward of my scene. That scene was the slope of a long hill—

The hills above and somewhat farther off to the southward and eastward, are clothed and crowned with oak woods of magnificence and size so unusual, and kept with such marked evidences of care and culture that no one could doubt, even if it were not proved by the gray turrets of an old baronial manor and the spire of a tall clock-house shooting up high over the tops of the forest giants, that they were the appendages and ornaments of some one of those ancient homes of England, which, full of the elegancies and graces of the present, remind us so pleasantly of the ruder, though not less homely, hospitalities of the past.

The immediate summit of the slope I have mentioned is bare, yet conspicuous for a single tree, the only one of its kind existing for many miles in that district—a single white pine, tall enough for the mast of some huge admiral, and as such visible, it is said, from points in the four northern provinces of England, and the two southernmost of Scotland—whence it is known far and wide, in many a border lay and legend, as the one-tree hill on Reedswood.^[2] Below the bare brow of this inland promontory, for such indeed it is, which is covered with beautiful, short, mossy grass, as firm and soft as the greensward of a modern race-course, and used as one vast pasture of two hundred acres, lies a vast tract of coppice, principally of oak and birch, but interspersed with expanses of waving heather, where the soil is too shallow to support a larger growth, and dotted here and there with bold, gray crags which have cropped out above the surface, and amongst these, few and far between, some glorious old, gnarled hawthorns, which may well have furnished May-wreaths to the yellow-haired daughters of the Saxon before the mailed-foot of the imperious Norman had dinted the green turf of England. This coppice overspread the whole declivity and base of the hill, until it melted into the broad, rich meadows, which, with a few scattered woods of small size, and here and there a patch of yellow wheat, or a fragrant bean-field, filled all the bottom of the great strath or valley, down to the banks of a large stream, beyond which the land rose steeply, first in rough moorland pastures, divided by dry stone walls, then in round heathery swells, then in great, broad-backed purple fells, and beyond all, faintly traceable in the blue haze of distance, in the vast ridges of the Cheviots and the hills of Tevydale. Along the base of the hill-side, parting it from the meadows, ran a tall, oak park-paling, made of rudely split planks, not any where less than five feet in height, through which access was given to the valley by heavy gates of the same material, from two or three winding wood-roads into the shadowy lanes of the lovely lower country.

Such was the scene, o’er which there arose before the sun, startling the hill echoes far and near, and silencing the grouse-cocks on the moors, and the song-birds in the brake and thicket by their tumultuous din, the shouts and fanfares that told the hunt was up.

“Tayho! Tayho!”

TarÀ-tarÀ-tara-tantara-rÂ-taratantara-tantara-rÀ-rÀ-rÂh. Which being interpreted into verbal dog-talk is conceived to say—“Gone-away! gone-away! gone-away! away! away! away!” and is immediately understood as such not by the well-mounted sportsmen only, but by what Scott calls, himself no unskilled woodsman, “the dauntless trackers of the deer,” who rush full-mouthed to the cheery clangor, filling all earth and ether with the musical discords of their sweet chidings.

The spot whence the first loud, manly shout “Tayho” resounded, was almost within the shadow of the one tree, where, as from a station commanding the whole view of the covert, which a powerful pack of the famous Talbot blood-hounds, numbering not less than forty couple, were in the act of drawing, a gay group was collected, gallantly appareled, gallantly mounted, and all intent, like the noble steeds they bestrode, eyes, ears and souls erect on the gallant sport of the day.

Those were the days of broad-leaved hats and floating plumes, of velvet justaucorps, rich on the seams with embroideries of gold and silver, of the martial jack-boot and the knightly spur on the heel, and the knightly sword on the thigh, and thus were our bold foresters accoutred for such a chase as is never heard tell of in these times of racing hounds and flying thoroughbreds, when the life of a fox is counted by the minutes he can live with a breast-high scent before the flyers, and the value of a hunter by the seconds he can go in the first flight with a dozen horseman’s stone upon its back.

Things then were otherwise, the fox was unkenneled, or the stag unharbored at daybreak, and killed if the scent lay well, sooner or later, before sunset—runs were reckoned by hours, hounds picked for their staunchness not their fleetness, horses bought not for their speed but for their stoutness, and the longest, steadiest last rider, not the most daring or the foremost won the palm of the chase, were it brush or antler, when the game fox was run into, or the gallant stag turned to bay.

The gentlemen, who were gathered on the broad, bare brow of the one-tree hill, were in all, twelve or thirteen in number, all at first sight men of gentle blood and generous education, although as there ever is, ever must be in every company, whether of men or of inferior animals, there was one to whom every eye, even of the unknown stranger or the ignorant peasant, would have naturally turned as evidently and undoubtedly the superior of the party, both in birth and breeding; he mingled nevertheless with the rest on the most perfect terms not of equality only, but of intimate familiar intercourse and friendship. No terms of ceremonial, no titles of rank or territorial influence, but simple Christian names passed between those gay and joyous youths; nor was there any thing in the habit of the wearers, or the mounting of the riders, to indicate the slightest difference in their positions of social well-being and well-doing. One youth, however, who answered to the name of Gerald, and sometimes to the patrimonial Howard, was so far the handsomer both in form and feature, the statelier in stature, the gracefuller in gesture, the manlier in bearing, the firmer and easier of seat and hand on his hunter, that any one would have been prompt to say almost at a glance, there is the man of all this gentle and generous group, whom, if war wakes its clangor in the land, if external perils threaten its coasts, or internal troubles shake its state, foreign war or domestic strife will alike find the foremost, whether in his seat with the senate, or in his saddle on the field, wielding with equal force and skill the stateman’s, scholar’s, soldier’s eye, tongue, sword—all honored him, indeed, and he deserved that all should honor him.

I have omitted, not forgotten or neglected, to mention as first and fairest of that fair company, a bevy of half a dozen fair and graceful girls—not like the gentlemen, all of one caste, but as was evident, not so much from the difference of their grace and beauty—though in these also there was a difference—as from the relative difference of position which they maintained, four remaining somewhat in the rear of the other two, and not mingling unless first addressed in the conversation, and from some distinction in the costliness and material of their attire.

A mounted chamberlain, with four or five grooms, who stood still farther aloof, in the rear of the ladies in waiting, and two or three glittering pages standing a-foot among the latter, in full tide of gallantry and flirtation, their coursers held by the grooms in attendance, made up the party. From which must always be excepted the huntsman, the verdurer, and eight or ten yeomen prickers, in laced green jerkins, with round velvet caps, like those worn by the whippers-in of the present day, and huge French-horns over their left shoulders, who were seen from time to time appearing, disappearing, and reappearing in the glades and dingles of the hill-side covert, and heard now rating the untimely and fallacious challenge of some wayward and willful puppy, now cheering the earnest and trusty whimper of some redoubted veteran of the pack, as he half-opened on a scent of yester-even.

The hounds had been in the coppice above an hour, and two-thirds of its length had already been drawn blank—the gentlemen were beginning to exchange anxious and wistful glances, and two or three had already consulted more than once or twice their ponderous, old-fashioned repeaters—and now the elder, shorter and fairer of the two damsels, giving the whip lightly to her chestnut palfry, cantered up to the side of Gerald Howard, followed by her companion, whose dark redundance of half-disheveled nut-brown tresses fell down from beneath a velvet cap, with a long drooping plume, on each side of a face of the most exquisite oval, with a high brow, long, jet-black eyelashes, showing in cold relief against her pure, colorless cheeks, for her eyes were downcast, and an expression of the highest intellect, which is ever found in woman mingled with all a woman’s tenderness and softness. She was something above the middle height, with a figure of rare slenderness and symmetry, exquisitely rounded, and sat her horse at once most femininely and most firmly, without the least indication of manliness in her seat or demeanor, yet with a certain of-at-homeness in her position and posture, that showed she could ride as well, perhaps as boldly, as the best man among them.

“Ah! Gerald, Gerald,” said the elder girl, laughingly, as she tapped him on the arm with the silver-butt of her riding-whip, “is this your faith to fair ladies, and especially to this fairest Kate, that you deluded us from our soft beds at this untimely hour, with promise to unharbor us a stag of ten within so many minutes, all for the pleasure of our eyes, and the delectation of our hearts, and here have we been sitting on this lone hill-side two hours and upward, to the great craving of our appetites and the faintness of our hearts, yearning—as the queen’s good Puritans would have it—after creature comforts—out on you! out on you, for a false knight, as I believe not, for my part, that there is one horn or hoof from the east to the west on the hill-side—no, not from the ‘throstle’s nest’ to the ‘thorny brae.’”

“Ah! sister mine, art so incredulous—but I will wager you or ere the Talbots reach that great gray stone, with the birch boughs waving over it like the plumes, as our bright Kate would say, of a dead warrior’s helmet over his cold brow, we will have a stag a-foot—ay, and a stag of ten.” And instantly raising his voice to a quicker and clearer note—“See now!” he cried, “see now!” as a superb, dark-colored animal, not lower than a yearling colt at the forehand, leaped with a bound as agile as if he was aided by wings, on the cope-stone of the dry stone wall which bounded the hither side of the hill coppice, with vast, branching antlers tossed as if in defiance, and a swan-like neck swollen with pride and anger. He stood there an instant, self-poised, self-balanced, “like the herald Mercury new lighted on a heaven-kissing hill”—uttered a hoarse, belling cry, peculiar to the animal in his season, and then sailing forth in a long, easy curve, alighted on the springy turf, whose enameled surface he scarce dinted, and then swept up the gentle slope almost toward the admiring group on the brow, but in a diagonally curved line that would carry him in the long run to the south-west of them, at the distance of perhaps a hundred yards.

“Tayho! Tayho!” burst in a clear and cheery shout from the excited lips of Gerald Howard.

And instantly from every part of the hill-side from east to west, from the throstle’s nest to the “thorny brae,” from ten well-blown French-horns burst the wild call TarÀ-tarÀ—tara-tantara-ra—tara-tantara-tantara—ra—ra—rah—“Gone away—gone away—gone away—away—away!” and the fierce rally of the mighty Talbots broke into tongue at once through the whole breadth and length of the oak coppice, as they came pouring up the hills, making the heather bend and the coppice crash before them like those famed Spartan hounds of Hercules and Cadmus,

“When in the woods of Crete they bayed the bear—

So flewed, so randed, and their heads were hung

With ears that sweep away the morning dew;

Crook-kneed and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls;

Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells

Each under each”