It is not to be supposed that a man is to be styled "dressed" when he has only got a proper coat on his back; something more than this is necessary ere he can claim a place in the beau monde, or can decently figure in a bal parÉ. There is no one, indeed, but your mere Hottentot, who considers himself the pink of fashion solely from the fact of throwing something, more or less becoming, over his shoulders; though, by the way, we once heard of a negro chief who, in a state of unclad majesty, clapped a gold-laced cocked-hat on his head, and then strutted about with an air of intense satisfaction at the result of his habilimentary effort. He was not a well-dressed man this chief, any more than our friend the Frenchman in the diligence; but we will tell you this Æsthetic story, gentle reader.

It was our destiny once—as it has been, too, of many a son of perfidious Albion—to be journeying across the monotonous plains of Upper Burgundy, en route for the gay capital. 'Twas a summer morn, and the breezy call of the incense-breathing lady, as Gray the poet calls her, came delightfully upon our heated forehead, as we pushed down the four-paned rattling window of that clumsy typefication of slowness, misnamed a diligence, to escape from the stifling atmosphere of the rotonde. Our fellow-travellers consisted of a couple of greasy, black-haired, sallow-faced curÉs, two farmers' wives with a puking child each, our own portly self, and the sixth passenger. Now, this sixth individual, who was in reality the eighth Christian immured in this quasi Black-hole, was one of those nondescript Parisian existences, to define whom is almost impossible to those who have never witnessed the animal. He might have been a commis-voyageur, or a clerk in the passport-office, or the keeper of a small cafÉ, or an Épicier, but he did not look stupid enough for the last. Be this as it may, he was short rather than tall, lean rather than fat,—in a shabby brown surtout—smoked and took snuff—had been in DauphinÉ—thought the Germans a set of European Chinese—considered a national guard as the model of a good soldier—kept spitting out of the window from time to time—stretched his legs most inconveniently against ours—tied his head up at dark in a dirty bird's-eye blue cotton mouchoir-de-poche, and snored throughout the night. He told us that he had not washed or shaved himself since leaving Lyons, two days before; and in the morning, just as we were opening the window, Monsieur yawned, stretched, rubbed his eyes, spat and spoke—"SacrÉ nom de cochon! Conducteur! conducteur! vous m'avez donc oubliÉ! il fallait me faire descendre lÀ bas!—lÀ bas! lÀ! lÀ! nom de Dieu!"—"Plait-il?" said the conducteur as he came round to the door, taking his pipe out of his mouth, "qu'est ce que vous voulez, M'sieur?"—"Je vous avais dit qu'il fallait me faire descendre chez M. Dubois, et maintenant nous voilÀ À——oÙ sommes-nous, par exemple?" "ImbÉcile! il y a encore trois bonnes lieues À la Pissotte!" and the angry conducteur, who had been roused from his sleep, and climbed over and round the lumbering vehicle to the back-door, now climbed round and over again to the banquette. The sixth passenger squeezed himself back into the corner, and resumed:—"M. Dubois ne m'attend pas: d'ailleurs je ne le connais pas: c'est Égal; je me nicherai chez lui pour une huitaine de jours: j'y ferai de bonnes affaires." All this was of course as unintelligible to the other passengers as it would have been uninteresting if we had cared to listen to him:—"Puisqu'il peut y avoir des dames," he went on, "il faut faire ma toilette." So saying, he took off his pocket-handkerchief from his head, and wiped his face well with it, yawned a good deal, and spat incontinently; opened his coat, spread back and jerked down the lapels; shoved his fingers comb-fashion and comb-colour through his matted hair till it stood up a lÀ Bugaboo; and then looked round for admiration. "Ah! je l'avais oubliÉ!" he exclaimed. Upon this he pulled out a large shabby green pocket-book from his coat; took off a greasy black stock, displaying a collarless shirt and neck, upon the tinge of which it would be needless to descant, and then extracting from the pocket-book two curvilinear pieces of dirty white paper, which had been folded more than once, and had an ink spot or two on their surface, applied them to his chin, holding their corners in his mouth, buckled on his stock again over them, adjusted these pseudo collars by aid of his watch-back, grinned a mile of approbation, and exclaimed, "Me voilÀ propre!"

It is not enough to be propre in one article of dress only: you must preserve a certain Æsthetical tournure, or else set yourself down among the frampy multitude for ever. This must be our apology, dear reader, for thus detaining your attention, and for setting before you "things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme," which may tend, if properly applied, to the inappreciable beautification of your own valuable person. Descend we therefore from the head and trunk of man—a curious bathos—to his understandings and unmentionables; you know what we mean. And herein, as in duty bound, draw we a distinction. "We know how to call all the drawers by name," (if we may so take a liberty with friend William's prose;) and let us therefore premise that we shall notice the unmentionable trews, femoralia, or periscelemata—as the Greeks would probably have called them, only they wore them not, but like Highland laddies preferred their own hides—of the virile portion of the community only. As for those tantalizing appendages of the better portion of her Majesty's subjects, we leave them in their proper concealment. We could easily write a volume or two to show that the custom came on Ormus, or Ind, or Araby the Blest; but criticism would not be tolerated, and besides—

Go, therefore, Æsthetic reader, to Trajan's column at Rome, and amid the barbaric costumes which adorn it, you will find the prototype of the modern trouser. Or you need not travel so much out of your way. In the Townley Gallery there is the figure of Mithras with a fashionable pantaloon on his legs; and in the Louvre there are two or three disconsolate-looking barbaric captives, with their trousers flapping about their shins, and tied round their ankles: these are the originals of our modern what-d'ye-call'ems. As for the good old buckskins of our venerated grandsires and governors, they arose in Roman times. Field-marshal Julius CÆsar wore something very near of kin to them under his military kilt, in that pretty little skirmish wherein he first had the honour of exchanging stones and darts with our British ancestors; and from those days down to the present time has this garment maintained its ground, and proved its utility, with undying pertinacity. Now, we do not approve of the barbaric trews: that tying of them round the ankles, though it kept out the cold, was decidedly a Sawney practice: it militated against the curves of the leg, and destroyed all firmness and dignity of gait. Far better was the fashion of the middle ages, when the trouser became a real pantaloon—a pantalon collant, as modern artists call it, and when the full symmetry of the limb was displayed to the utmost advantage. This was, no doubt, the acme of perfection that the garment in question was capable of; and it is to be lamented that the mode has not kept its position in society more universally. For all purposes of ceremonial or ornamental dress, this form should still be rigidly adhered to. Utility and ornament here go hand in hand, or rather inside each other. No disguisement of natural form is attempted; and a man's appearance is judged of at its true value. The tight pantaloon is at once simple, useful, and beautiful. So far for its form. But there is an immense difficulty in the choice of its substance. If too elastic, the knee will soon make for itself one of those provoking pudding-bags that have tended, more than any thing else, to bring the fashion into disfavour. If too rigid and too frail, you know the catastrophe! We still remember the case of a fat friend of ours at a fancy-ball! British manufacturing ingenuity should bestir itself to invent a stuff fit for satisfactorily solving this vestimental problem of the greatest strain; and the pantaloon might then once more resume its paramount sway. To revert to the old buckskin: it is a perfectly respectable, useful, and satisfactory affair for the purposes to which it is now applied, and worn with a stout top-boot, and thrown over the side of a gallant horse, has no superior in the world. It is also a very good thing to put on if you are going to a new tailor's in town, especially if you can write Harkaway Hall as your address. The man will set you down for a real country-squire, and will give you tick for the next twenty years. But if you want to avoid having your pocket picked, don't wear buckskins as you go along Piccadilly; buckskins and tops, on foot, are so truly Arcadian in their appearance, that the swell mob cannot resist the temptation, and you are pretty sure to be victimized. As for the unmeaning black things worn with white silk stockings on court-days, and gloried in by all the beaux of the eighteenth century, they ought to be sent to the right-about as neither useful nor becoming. It may be all very well for Spanish matadors and Castilian dancers to wear them; but they were originally intended to have boots beneath them—so Charles I. wore them until he borrowed a foolish fashion from France—and from the very cut and nature of them, they should be worn so still, or abandoned altogether. We quarrel with them, not on the score of form so much as on that of inutility and undue contrast of colour. If the thing be dark, and the stocking light, an effect of cleanliness is attained; but the magpie appearance immediately prevails. The case is the same as that of a white waistcoat and a black coat; too glaring, trop prononcÉ. If they are both of the same colour, then the tight and continuous pantaloon is far more reasonable and becoming, and, for use, any thing else is better—experto crede. The only exception in its favour that we can make, is for the sportsman and the farmer; for him who joins on a stout legging or a gaiter, whether of cloth or leather; or, if you wish to do a bit of Jerry Hawthorn to some friend's Tom or Logic, here is your garment de rigueur;—put on your leggings, your green coats, and your white hat, and you are complete; but unless you wish to be mistaken for your friend's butler, or a waiter from your club, do not venture on the black culotte.

The trouser, then—the modern trouser—what are we to say of this? Why, that it is the most useful, the most comfortable, the most economical, and one of the least ugly garments ever invented by man. We almost remember the day, dear reader, when as yet trousers were among the great unborn; it was only the Duke, and those dashing fellows at his heels, who imported the idea, we believe from Germany originally, though they used it in the Peninsula. After the battle of Waterloo, no man of any spirit at all ever wore any thing else for common use. It existed, certainly, among our honest tars long previously to this epoch; but the fashion did not come from them; the rage originated with the Peninsular troops, and was confirmed by the examples of the brilliant staffs that accompanied the Allied sovereigns to this country in 1814. It is true that the trouser did not assume its definite and rational form, such as it now has, all at once; it went through a round of vagaries indicative of a most diseased state of public taste. At one time it was all À la Cosaque, and you might have made a greatcoat out of a pair; at another, it was half up the leg, and more than two feet in circumference; by degrees it got strapped down and cut away into a sensible kind of shape; and now it has attained the juste milieu, making a happy compromise between the tight symmetry of the pantaloon, and the flaunting of the sailor's ducks. An immense step in the improvement of this garment has been made by the introduction of all that beautiful variety of plaids, and checked patterns, which are so commonly used; those in wool for winter wear are truly delightful; while for summer use, the trouser recommends itself to our untiring favour by the multiplicity of soft light substances which are every where employed. The trouser is to the pantaloon as the foraging cap is to the hat—good for all kinds of use, and likely to remain so for an indefinite period; good for all ranks and for all ages. One canon, however, should be laid down as to the cut:—no pockets should be tolerated on any account whatever: they make a man look like a Yankee. 'Tis the most slovenly custom on earth to keep your hands in your pockets—you deserve to have them sewed in if you indulge in it. And therefore, to avoid this disagreeable penalty, have your pockets sewed up.

The next step downwards in the scale of dress brings us to the basis, foundation, and understanding of mankind—we mean boots and shoes; and here, being approvers of both "men and women's concise recti," as old Joe used to say, we must give a word of advice to both sexes; and ye who groan under the torments of corns, ("bunions" is a nasty word, we always think of onions when we hear it,) attend to our dictum. If any thing imperatively demands that utility should be consulted before ornament in its construction, it is the covering of the foot; whoever goes hunting in a dancing-pump is a fool, and whoever dances in a shooting-shoe is a clodhopper. There can be no doubt that the human mind speedily adopted normal rules of design when first the idea of protecting the foot was started in the world—and, on the whole, less absurdity has been evidenced in the pedal integuments than in most other matters of dress. The old tragic buskin, and the comic sock, the military sandal, caliga, and boot, all did their duty excellently in ancient times: we have not a word of reproach for them—and their successors in the middle ages acquitted themselves of their duties in a tolerably satisfactory manner, though not without some curious flights of fancy. Thus the cross gartering of the Saxon buskin, boots, or gaiter, or whatever else it might have been, looks to us truly absurd and uncomfortable, judging from the caricatured figures of ancient MSS.; but the peaked and tied-up points of the 14th century, when the toe was fastened to the knee, strikes us as the ne plus ultra of human folly. How Richard II.'s courtiers must have gone slopping and spirting about in the mud that befouled their streets as well as ours! What queer figures they must have cut on horseback in a rainy day, with the water running off from the pendulous tips of their shoes! Nevertheless, there was something good in the arrangement of the upper part of the shoe or half-boot of those times, and even of earlier days, as any one who reads the Art-Union, or who knows the history of British costume, can tell. It formed an appropriate termination to the tightly-dressed limb; and when not too much pointed, prolonged the natural shape of the foot into a gracefully-curving support. Shoes, in the present sense of the term, were not then worn: every thing was limited to the elastic half-boots: but for the huntsman or the horseman, not armed for the tented field, a sort of brown leather boot coming up to the knee was in common use. This had no falling tops, and was far removed from the ridiculous Spanish boot of after days. It was a plain and useful servant to the cavalier, and became him much better than the ponderous jack-boot of later times. It is to the Spaniards that we are indebted, if "indebted" be a suitable term, for the wide-topped falling boot of the sixteenth century; that inconvenient, no-service thing—good for the stage-players, fancy-ball men, and fellows like old Hudibras, who crammed a portable larder and wardrobe into its unfathomable recesses; but for the rough-riding horseman or the active hunter, a nuisance beyond all description. Boots such as these may look admirably well in pictures; for when delineated by a Vandyke, any thing would become graceful; but for actual practice, they would serve only to catch the rain, and to gall the legs of the wearer. Their descendant, the top-boot, has reformed itself wonderfully, and nearly all the inconvenience has been got rid of. Still, the brown colour of the top, which is no longer the inside of the boot turned down, as it was once, is an anomaly, and the boot itself ought to be merged in the plain single-coloured boot which is now much used on the Continent, though in England patronized only by the Meltonians. For positive use, the boot ought to come up fully to, or above, the knee, in order to stand the wear and pressure of the saddle; but for ornament, it may well be allowed to rise only partially up the leg, and to be, in short, the beautiful Hessian or Hungarian boot—far the most graceful covering ever put on the leg of a modern European. That such a truly elegant boot, so gentlemanlike, so dressy, and yet so thoroughly serviceable, should ever have gone out of fashion, is to us a melancholy, though not a needed, proof of the sheer caprice by which men's fancies are commonly swayed. We suspect, however, that if any cause more ostensible than mere accident can be alleged for this change, it is to be traced to some knock-knee'd or spindle-shanked fellow, who was ashamed to show his mis-shapen legs, and therefore concealed them in loose trousers. These boots, it is true, were not so well calculated for campaigning as the smaller ones which still bear the great man's name; and this may have had something to do with their disuse; nevertheless the change is to be lamented Æsthetically, for the perfect union of utility and ornament was never so well exemplified as in the Hessian boot.

With all due respect to the dancing world, or to the world of dancing-masters, we beg leave to anathematize the light shoe or pump; it is an ugly, inconvenient, unsuitable thing, fit for a man with a white waistcoat, gold chain, knee-breeches, &c., but not for a gentleman. The true Æsthetical article is either the elastic half-boot of the middle ages; fitting on to the pantaloon, or else the thin Wellington boot of the present day under the trousers. We do not care to see your ribbed and open-worked silk stockings; such display is not for the sterner sex; even in his highest moments of ornament, a man should always bear about him a trace of the useful. To illustrate what we mean—a man is not born to be a dancing-master, nor a tavern-waiter; a gentleman, more especially, is intended, from the moment he can run alone, to be ready for feats of gallantry and hardihood. He should dress accordingly; and, as a fundamental rule, the reason for which lies deeper than most people think, a gentleman should always be so attired as that, if occasion demands, he should be able to mount a horse on the instant and ride for his life. Now, your modern exquisite in pumps, or your old beau of the last century in high red-heeled shoes, could do nothing of the kind without much previous preparation; and we take it to be a sign of their degenerating manhood. Nine-tenths of the men who take pleasure in shoes and pumps, are but tailors on horseback; and the old fox-hunter, or the old dragoon, (good types both in their way of what a man should be,) love their boots next to their bottle. A slipper and a dressing-gown are excellent companions, agree well together, and never give their master a moment's uneasiness; hence their value; similarly, a stout high-low and a good leathern legging, buttoned well over the ankle beneath, and the knee above, will carry a man through heather or gorse, on foot or on horseback, and will prove "marvellous good wear;" they ought to be, as indeed they commonly are, dear friends to "whoever loves his country."

As for the ladies, truly we have little to say; they have always done pretty well in the matter of their feet. For them shoes are indispensably necessary, and, indeed, highly appropriate and becoming—so, too, are half-boots—and, fixed between these limits, the fair sex never have gone, nor, perhaps, can go, far astray. The nearer they keep to the form of nature in the clothing of their feet the better—it is a rule as true as the day, that a woman can seldom, if ever, artificially improve her form. But there is one curious circumstance connected with ladies' shoes, which, it appears, our fair countrywomen are not competent judges of—at least we appeal to every man in England not beyond his grand climacteric, and with two eyes in his head, for the correctness of our views in what we are going to assert:—a lady's shoe, worn with crossing sandals, gently curving over the instep and round the ankle, is immeasurably superior to the plain, quaker-like, old-maid affair, worn with the old-fashioned tie or button. Did women but know how much these slender lines of riband add to their appearance, how well the contrast sets off the anatomical beauties of their feet, they would never put on a shoe without such an appendage. In the same way, the nicely fitted boot, displaying the exact form of the arching foot, and deliciously-contrasted in colour with the robe or stocking, gives a prestige to a lady's foot, which can only be compared to the effect produced by the Hessian boot upon their lords and masters. We have nothing to say against the prevailing fashion of ladies' chaussures worn—even down to the clog and pattern, every thing is elegant, every thing is proportionably useful.

One hint let us give to all. The secret of a well-fitting shoe, or rather of a good-looking shoe—and it is upon this principle that all French shoemakers proceed, but all English cobblers do not—is, that it should be much longer than the foot itself—at least an inch or an inch and a half longer. And for these two reasons: first, that, since a squat, broad, dumpy foot is much uglier than a long thin one, therefore you may always diminish the appearance of breadth, by adding to the reality of length; and next, that when the shoe is long, the toes have plenty of room, and commonly 'tis here that "the shoe pinches." No one has corns on his heels or the sides of his feet, let his shoes or boots be as narrow as he can well bear them: it is upon those poor, pent up, imprisoned, distorted joints of the toes, that the rubs of the world come, and that the corning process goes on. If you would cure yourself, reader, of the most obdurate corn, or if you would guarantee your children from ever having any, let them, and do you yourself, wear French chaussures; or else have the boots, &c., made fitting well to the foot at the side, and with exactly one inch, at the least, to spare in length, when standing in them. We'll bet you a hundred to one on the result: and you may ask any cordonnier in the Rue de Richelieu.

English shoemakers, be it observed, are nearly a century behind their Gallic brethren in the craft; they work more clumsily—with less art, less means, and less desire to please; they have no invention in the higher parts of their science, and they are abominably dear. We do not wish to disparage any thing in our native country—far from it; but take the hint, gentle reader; whatever your friends may say about it, always buy a French shoe or boot in preference to an English one; if of equal quality, the cut of the French is sure to be better; if not quite so strong, yet the goodness of the fit makes the thing wear longer. Above all, whenever you go to Paris, lay in as large a stock of these things as your purse will allow; they never get worse for age, and they are cheaper and better there than in any other part of the world. The next time you meet us in the Park, we'll show you a pair of boots made for us by Legrand in 1841, which we have ridden in and walked in now three winters; there is not a crack in them; they, like their master, have never lost their soles, (we can't say so much for our hearts,) they fit us like our own skin, and they cost less than a pound sterling. Dear old Hoby may go and hang himself!

From the regions of mud, dust, leather, and blacking, we will now reascend to the higher localities of the human person, and will fasten ourselves round the reader's neck. Do not be alarmed, we only want to catch your attention; we will not extend the word to any thing else. Here, too, ladies are exemplified by their especial privilege from our impudent scrutiny; their necks when unadorned are adorned the most; if they are cold, let them put on their boas, or a fichu, or muffle up with their shawls; let them eschew all false collars, let them delight in good lace, and the matter is settled. But for a man with a bad tie! we could take him by the throat and throttle him! Here it is our duty freely to declare our candid opinion, that Beau Brummell and George IV. were not benefactors to the human race by introducing stiff cravattes and endless swathes of linen round the region of jugular veins and carotid arteries; if a man wishes to be comfortable any where, it is surely in his neck; let old gentlemen with scrofulous chins muffle themselves up to suffocation if they please, but why should we, who have nothing the matter with us, and wish to turn our heads ad libitum, be thus girt about and half stifled? Our climate, no doubt, requires some protection for the neck, and while beards are not worn, a cravat of some kind or other may be said to be necessary; but if comfort and use can be combined with elegance and good taste, and yet the old starched thing got rid of, so much the better. Let us remark, therefore, that we have done wrong in quitting the fashion of the seventeenth century as to cravats; we have adopted a stiff and a common material, and we have lost all opportunity of enjoyment, as well as of ornament. If you ever indulge in a white choker, good reader, only reflect for a minute on what you have round your neck—a yard and a half of stuff, the intrinsic value of which may be a couple of shillings, plus a pennyworth of starch, plus a neck as thick as an elephant's leg, and as stiff as a door-post, minus all grace, minus all comfort. But go and look at the Second Charles at Hampton Court—see how the merry monarch managed his neck on gala-days. You will observe that he had half a yard of the finest cambric, as soft as a zephyr, and as warm as swan's-down, tied once round; and ending before in long deep borders of the most precious Mechlin lace, worth a guinea or two a-yard, falling gracefully on his breast, or placed for convenience into a fold of his coat. How much more sensible, how much more ornamental, how much more noble, such a scarf or cravat as this, which no shopman's boy could emulate, than the cheap and ugly thing in which many a man still seems to delight! How admirably did these bands of rich lace contrast with the silken coats or the polished cuirasses of their wearers! how truly aristocratic was their appearance! how entirely without effort, without pretension, and yet how very distinctive of the type of their wearer! But you will say, if we fail in the matter of white cravats, surely we excel in that of black-silk ones and brocaded stocks! We might excel, we allow; but we do not know how to wear these things. We ought either to limit ourselves to the smallest possible bow in front, or else we ought to let the square ends of the scarf be pendant and unconfined. Instead of this, we either put on a stock with a sham tie, (now all sham things, of what kind soever, militate against good taste,) or else, to make the most of our scarf, we fill up the aperture of the waistcoat with an ambitious quantity of drapery, and we stick therein an enormous and obtrusively ostentatious pin. This is both vulgar and foolish. If we want a stock, it should be perfectly plain—À la militaire, for it is, in truth, an article of military attire, worn for the express purpose of giving stiffness and smartness to the figure. If we want a scarf, do not let us misconceive the nature of its form, the law of its curves, and huddle it up into an untidy, unmeaning mass, fit for nothing but to serve as a field of display for what is commonly cheap and bad jewellery. We may be wrong, but we strongly suspect that the tie-stock and the large silk scarf were brought into use by some dirty fellow, whose linens would not stand the test of public examination; and, indeed, whenever we see a man more than usually adorned in this way about the neck, we conjecture that all is not right beneath. A small black or judiciously coloured cravat, with a very small bow, and just sufficient stiffness to give dignity to the head—this should be the morning wear of the real gentleman; in the evening, let him put on the finest fabric of the flax-loom, and the most expensive lace he can afford to purchase—they will be very becoming, and will be duly appreciated by the ladies, who know the cost of such things; all silks and stocks let him leave to men-milliners.

Which side are we to take in the collar question—ups, or downs, or none at all? We confess ourselves to be practically in a dilemma; although, Æsthetically speaking—and, indeed, from motives of comfort—we have no hesitation in saying, turn down your collars; they never were meant to be turned up. But it is now become so much of a French and English affair, that we shall be suspected of want of patriotism if we do not say, keep up your collars, and uphold the national dignity! As for the no-collar view of the subject, much may be said for and against it: it depends a good deal on your complexion, reader, and also on the colour of your cravat. If you have got on your cambric and your lace, you need no further contrast for your physiognomical tint; but if you are wearing a black kerchief, and you are of a bilious brown and yellow hue, pray let us see half an inch, at least, of white beneath the lower jawbone. This point of contrast is the real reason why the collar should, as a matter of taste, be allowed to lie down on the cravat. It produces greater effect—it looks cleaner—it is certainly more comfortable. If the majority of freeborn Englishmen shall ever so far surmount their prejudices as to take a hint from France, (for 'tis an invention of la jeune France,) we will walk over from our side of the house, and, in face of the nation and our constituents, will join them.

Collars are connected with wristbands just as the two ends of the electric telegraph are by the communicating wires, and the satisfactory intelligence disclosed by the one, that the wearer is a good friend to his laundress, is, or should be, simultaneously repeated by the other. Believe us, reader, there is no more distinctive mark of a correct man than a snowy-white wristband, always to be visible. Here again we must establish another Æsthetical rule of proportion, viz. collars are to wristbands as laced cravats are to ruffles; and therefore, if you decide upon taking our advice and indulging in Brussels lace while you sip your claret, you must also buy lace enough to adorn your wrists, and you will not repent of the expense or the effect. It is, in truth, a pretty and a graceful fashion, which, for evening dress, should entirely be re-introduced, and we anticipate that the ladies would be unanimous in their approbation.

A few more words on odds and ends of dress, and we have done with civil costume. Always keep yourself well supplied with gloves; wear them neither of a blue, nor yet of a green, nor even of a red colour: any other kind of tint you may, under various circumstances, indulge in. Always use white, and the finest cambric, pocket-handkerchiefs: you can thus neither take snuff, nor avoid using a considerable number; do not regret the expense—the ladies will reward you with their approbation, and you cannot be mistaken for an American. Whether you be male or female, gentle reader, do not wear much jewellery—beware of being taken for one of the swell-mob and the doubtfuls; but if you are a lady, and wish for jewellery in the evening, choose between pearls and diamonds; better have a few of these, and good, than whole caskets of topazes and amethysts. If you are a gentleman, wear only two rings—one for your lady-love, the other for your armorial bearings—if you have a gold chain to your watch, keep it, but the less you show of it the better. Avoid a foolish custom now springing up, of fastening the coat with a couple of supplementary buttons, attached by a metallic link. This is the trick of some scoundrel tailor, who sent home a coat too small for the wearer, and thus persuaded him (he must have been an ass) to tie two buttons together, and so make both ends meet. It will do very well for a commercial gent, but not for a gentleman. We need hardly say, be not fine on a Sunday: dress plainer then than usual, if you would maintain your dignity; and be not ashamed of an old coat—only let it be clean, portez-le bien, soyez bien chaussÉ, bien gantÉ, bien coiffÉ et vous n'aurez jamais l'air d'un bourgeois. Above all things, whether you be man, woman, or child, remember, that the more you approximate to uniformity of colour for the whole of your dress, the better. Whether you prefer white to black, blue to green, or brown to red, no matter. Stick to the law of Æsthetic unity—retain natural and undisguised contour, breadth and mellowness of colour, ease and dignity of movement, and you will approximate to perfection.