are happy, natural, and familiar. But a Baker-Street hop is a base invention, and as such let it be denounced and avoided. A dressing-gown has great merits certainly; but it is dangerous. A man who wears it of mornings generally takes the liberty of going without a neckcloth, or of not shaving, and is no better than a driveller. Sometimes, to be sure, it is necessary, in self-defence, not to shave, as a precaution against yourself that is to say; and I know no better means of ensuring a man's remaining at home than neglecting the use of the lather and razor for a week, and encouraging a crop of bristles. When I wrote my tragedy, I shaved off for the two last acts my left eye-brow, and never stirred out of doors until it had grown to be a great deal thicker than its right-hand neighbour. But this was an extreme precaution; and unless a man has very strong reasons indeed for stopping at home, and a very violent propensity to gadding, his best plan is to shave every morning neatly, to put on his regular coat, and go regularly to work, and to avoid a dressing-gown as the father of all evil. Painters are the only persons who can decently appear in dressing-gowns; but these are none of your easy morning-gowns; they are commonly of splendid stuff, and put on by the artist in order to render himself remarkable and splendid in the eyes of his sitter. Your loose-wadded German schlaf-rock, imported of late years into our country, is the laziest, filthiest invention; and I always augur as ill of a man whom I see appearing at break-fast in one, as of a woman who comes down stairs in curl-papers. By the way, in the third act of Macbeth, Mr. Macready makes his appearance in the court-yard of Glamis Castle in an affair of brocade that has always struck me as absurd and unMacbeth-like. Mac in a dressing-gown, (I mean ' Beth, not 'Ready),-Mac in list slippers, Mac in a cotton nightcap, with a tassel bobbing up and down, I say the thought is unworthy, and am sure the worthy thane would have come out, if suddenly called from bed, by any circumstance however painful, in a good stout Jacket. It is a more manly, simple, and majestic wear, than the lazy dressing-gown; it more becomes a man of Macbeth's mountainous habits; it leaves his legs quite free to run whithersoever he pleases, whether to the stables, to look at the animals,-to the farm, to see that the pig has been slaughtered this morning, -to the garden, to examine whether that scoundrel of a John Hoskins has dug up the potato-bed,-to the nursery, to have a romp with the little Macbeth's that are spluttering and quarrelling over their porridge, or whither you will. A man in a jacket is fit company for any body; there is no shame about it, as about being seen in a changed coat; it is simple, steady, and straight-forward. It is, as I have stated, all over pockets, which contain every thing you want; in one, your buttons, hammer, small nails, thread, twine and clothstrips for the trees on the south wall; in another your dogwhip and whistle, your knife, cigar-case, gingerbread for the children, paper of Epsom salts for John Hoskins's mother, who is mortal bad,-and so on there is no end to the pockets, and to the things you put in them. Walk about in your jacket, and meet what person you will, you assume at once an independent air; and thrusting your hands into the receptacle that flaps over each hip, look the visitor in the face, and talk to the ladies on a footing of perfect equality. Whereas, look at the sneaking way in which a man caught in a dressing-gown, in loose bagging trousers most likely, (for the man who has a dressing-gown, has two to one no braces), and in shuffling slippers, see how he whisks his dressinggown over his legs, and looks ashamed and uneasy. His lanky hair hangs over his blowsy, fat, shining, unhealthy face; his bristly, dumpling-shaped double chin peers over a flaccid shirt-collar; the sleeves of his gown are in rags; and you see underneath a pair of black wrist-bands and the rim of a dingy flannel waist-coat. --- A man who is not strictly neat in his person is not an honest man. I shall not enter into this very ticklish subject of personal purification and neatness, because this Essay will be read by hundreds of thousands of ladies as well as men ; and for the former I would wish to provide nothing but pleasure. Men may listen to stern truths; but for ladies one should only speak verities that are sparkling, rosy, brisk, and agreeable. A man who wears a dressing-gown is not neat in his person; his moral character takes invariably some of the slatternliness and looseness of his costume; he becomes enervated, lazy, incapable of great actions. A man in a Jacket is a man. All great men wore jackets. Walter Scott wore a jacket, as every-body knows; Byron wore a jacket (not that I count a man who turns down his collars for much); I have a picture of Napoleon in a jacket, at St. Helena; Thomas Carlyle wears a jacket; Lord John Russell mounts a jacket immediately on arriving at the Colonial Office; and if I have a single fault to find with that popular writer, the author of-never mind what, you know his name as well as I-it is that he is in the habit of composing his works in a large flowered damask dressing-gown, and morocco slippers; whereas in a jacket he would write you off something, not so flowery, if you please, but of honest texture something not so long, but terse, modest and comfortable,no great, long, strealing tails of periods, no staring peonies and holly-hocks of illustrations, no flaring cords and tassels of episodes, -no great, dirty, wadded sleeves of sentiments, ragged at the elbows and cuffs, and mopping up every thing that comes in their way, cigar-ashes, ink, candle-wax, cold brandy-and-water, coffee, or whatever aids to the brain he may employ as a literary man'; not to mention the quantity of tooth-powder, whisker-dye, soapsuds and pomatum, that the same garment receives in the course of the toilets at which it assists: Let all literary men, then get jackets. I prefer them without tails; but do not let this interfere with another man's pleasure he may have tails if he likes, and I for one will never say him nay. : Like all other things, however, jackets are subject to abuse; and the pertness and conceit of those jackets cannot be sufficiently reprehended which one sees on the backs of men at wateringplaces, with a telescope poking out of one pocket, and a yellow bandana flaunting from the other. Nothing is more contemptible than Tims in a jacket, with a blue bird's-eye neckhandkerchief tied sailor-fashion, puffing smoke like a steamer, with his great broad orbicular stern shining in the sun. I always long to give the wretch a smart smack upon that part VOL. I. 6 where his coat-tails ought to be, and advise him to get into a more decent costume. There is an age and a figure for jackets; those who are of certain build should not wear them in public. Witness fat officers of the dragoon-guards that one has seen bumping up and down the Steyne, at Brighton, on their great chargers, with a laced and embroidered coat, a cartridge-box, or whatever you call it, of the size of a twopenny-loaf, placed on the small of their backs-if their backs may be said to have a small,-and two little twinkling abortions of tails pointing downward to the enormity jolting in the saddle. Officers should be occasionally measured, and after passing a certain width, should be drafted into other regiments, or allowed nay ordered-to wear frock-coats. The French tailors make frock-coats very well, but the people who wear them have the disgusting habit of wearing stays, than which nothing can be more unbecoming the dignity of man. Look what a waist the Apollo has! not above four inches less in the girth than the chest is. Look, ladies, at the waist of the Venus, and pray-pray do not pinch in your dear little ribs in that odious and unseemly way. In a young man, a slim waist is very well; and if he looks like the Eddystone light-house, it is as nature intended him to look. A man of a certain age may be built like a tower, stalwart and straight. Then a man's middle may expand from the pure cylindrical to the barrel shape; well, let him be content. Nothing is so horrid as a fat man with a band; an hourglass is a most mean and ungraceful figure. Daniel Lambert is ungraceful, but not mean. One meets with some men who look in their frock-coats perfectly sordid, sneaking, and ungentleman-like; who, if you see them dressed for an evening have a slim, easy, almost fashionable appearance. Set these persons down as fellows of poor spirit and milk-sops. Stiff white ties and waistcoats, prim straight tails, and a gold chain, will give any man of moderate lankiness an air of factitious gentility; but if you want to understand the individual, look at him in the day-time; see him walking with his hat There is a great deal in the build and wearing of hats, a great deal more than at first meets the eye. I know a man on. who in a particular hat looked so extraordinarily like a man of property, that no tradesman on earth could refuse to give him credit. It was one of André's, and cost a guinea and a half ready money; but the person in question was frightened at the enormous charge, and afterwards purchased beavers in the city at the cost of seventeen-and-six-pence. And what was the consequence? He fell off in public estimation, and very soon after he came out in his city hat it began to be whispered abroad that he was a ruined man. A blue coat is after all the best, but a gentleman of my acquaintance has made his fortune by an Oxford mixture, of all colours in the world, with a pair of white buckskin gloves. He looks as if he had just got off his horse, and as if he had three thousand a-year in the country. There is a kind of proud humility in an Oxford mixture. Velvet collars, and all such gimcracks, had best be avoided by sober people. This paper is not written for drivelling dandies, but for honest men. There is a great deal of philosophy and forethought in Sir Robert Peel's dress; he does not wear those white waistcoats for nothing. I say that O'Connell's costume is likewise that of a profound rhetorician, slouching and careless as it seems. Lord Melbourne's air of reckless, good-humoured don't-care-a-damnativeness is not obtained without an effort. Look at the Duke when he passes along in that stern little straight frock and plaid breeches; look at him and off with your hat! How much is there in that little grey coat of Napoleon's! A spice of claptrap and dandyism, no doubt; but we must remember the country which he had to govern. I never see a picture of George III., in his old stout Windsor uniform, without a feeling of respect; or of George IV., in breeches and silk stockings, a wig, a sham smile, a frogged frock-coat and a fur collar, without that proper degree of reverence which such a costume should inspire. The coat is the expression of the man ▬▬▬ and as the peachtree throws out peach leaves, the pear-tree pear ditto; as old George appeared invested in the sober old garment of blue and red, so did young George, in oiled wigs, fur collars, and braided surtouts, according to his nature. |