CLOTHING. 
29 
now.” Of wliat use this measuring of me if she does 
not measure my character, but only the breadth of my 
shoulders, as it were a peg to hang the coat on? We 
worship not the Graces, nor the Parcse, but Fashion. 
She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. 
The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and 
all the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes 
despair of getting any thing quite simple and honest 
done in this world by the help of men. They would 
have to be passed through a powerful press first, to 
squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would 
not soon get upon their legs again, and then there would 
be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, 
hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows 
when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would 
have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will not forget 
that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us -by a 
mummy. 
On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained 
that dressing has in this or any country risen to the dig¬ 
nity of an art. At present men make shift to wear 
what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put 
on what they can find on the beach, and at a little dis¬ 
tance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other’s 
masquerade. Every generation laughs at the old fash¬ 
ions, but follows religiously the new. We ara&amused 
at beholding the costume of Henry VIII., or Queen 
Elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the King and 
Queen of the Cannibal Islands. All costume off a man 
is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious eye peer¬ 
ing from and the sincere life passed within it, which re¬ 
strain laughter and consecrate the costume of any peo¬ 
ple. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic and 
