SELECTED FOR THE MUSEUM.

MORE FASHIONS.

FASHION, the supreme God, or Goddess, and arbiter elegantíarum, or arbitrix, does not limit its rule to the collar of a coat or the altitude of a tucker alone. In all, in every thing, it is sovereign; to all, to every thing, it is the rule and the law; from its behests there is no appeal; to live according to it is to live according to nature and to the eternal fitness of things; to renounce it is to be condemned, as Dogberry says, to "eternal salvation."

To say where fashion is "bred," is not quite so easy; unless it be "engendered in the eyes," like fancy; for, like fancy, it dies "with gazing." We become wearied of the tyrant of the day; and, like the Grand Turk, he is deposed, or bowstringed, to make way for a new tyrant and a successor. We continue to adore the successor, as we worshipped the predecessor, "mox daturus progeniem vitiosorem," and so on, to the last syllable of recorded time.

Yet all fashions are not as ephemeral as the revolutions of the mutable sex. To some is given a shorter, and to some a longer date, like human life: some are secular in their durability; and while a few undergo a transmigration or demise that appears almost voluntary, others must be battered at, like Olympus, before they fall, crushed into atoms like the complicated beast in the Revelations. Thus, while the lion wig of Louis XIV. pined gradually away into a pigtail, while men scarcely marked the successive phases it required the battering rams of a whole nation to subvert the fashion of Lettres de Cachet and to replace them with the better fashion of Habeas Corpus.

But what is the real basis, cause, progenitor, of fashion?-Indolence. Indolence; the principle of imitation; the greater facility there is in following than in leading, defects in the thinking faculty, want of the reasoning faculty, want of sense, want of consideration respecting "the fitness of things." Man is but a monkey; and, like the monkeys in Quintus Curtius, he would even tie his legs together if he had a sufficient warranty. He cuts off his tail; believes it is all for the best, whether in government, or in drinking and swearing, till some other great baboon takes the lead and revolves the whole system.

When will man cease to be the slave of this tyrant? When he learns to reason and to think, to observe and to reason, to compare and conclude; and if we want to know why the versatile sex is peculiarly fashion's slave, there is the answer. It is best, because it is best.

Other people think so. It is easier to think from other people than from one's own head. This is what is called opinion. The opinions of mankind are like their coats. They are made by another person; adopted and worn, and they become property. ManVOL. VII. No. 42.-Museum.

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kind has no other opinions. One man in a million is capable of forming an opinion, a conclusion derived from evidence and deduced by reasoning. Others borrow it; such is the mass of opinions. Opinion is fashion: and hence it varies, and hence the Catholic Church is the best of all possible churches, and the British Constitution the best of all possible constitutions,-till the Reformed Church becomes still better, and James is followed by William. It is but the last cut of the last coat, after all.

Its power extends from the Zenith to the Nadir, from pole to pole. There are fashions in mousetraps, and law, and shoemaking, and physic, and furniture, and religion, and painting, and architecture, and cookery, and morals, and drinking, and preaching, and swearing, and fighting, and education, and fortification, and navigation, and lamplighting, and toothdrawing, and fish sauce, and blacking, and politics, and even in love! and in commerce, and beauty, and colonization, and emigration, and population, and taxation, and political economy, and in poetry, and oratory, and novel writing, and balloons, and in Mr. Matthews, and the Diorama, and the Royal Society, and the Elephant at Exeter Change, and in Exeter Change itself, and the Bazaar of Soho Square, and in Soho Square itself, and Grosvenor Square, and Pall Mall, and the Park, and in riding, and driving, and eating, and clubs, and Moulsey Hurst, and Eton, and Westminster, and cockfighting, and duelling, and joint-stock companies, and-Cospetto!-we must end somewhere, for there is no end.

Why, here are theses for a folio as big as the Arcadia. We are not going to cram them into the Lilliput of our Magazine. Believe it not, gentle reader. But there is a fashion in magazines too; and while ours is The Fashion, shall we not take our case in our own Magazine in our own way.

Firstly, therefore, of mousetraps. But as we foresee interminable infinity in a long perspective before us, we must rein-in while it is yet time.

That there should be a fashion in eating!-The very monkey cracks his nuts as did the original monkey, whom Dr. Clarke proves to have been the very Opis that tempted the mother of all fashions and the first mantua-maker. It is not the fashion that the Great Sirloin, England's glory, should be seen at the table; and, therefore, it is hacked by the butler, or, in defect of him, by a bungling footman, and we are cheated out of our dinners. It is not the fashion that vegetables should be placed on the table with the first course, and as there are not servants enough to help every one, we must go without. It is the fashion, to place them on the table with the second course when we do not want them; but it would be unfashionable to place enough there; and the gardener very wisely sells them to Covent Garden market, that the unfashionables may eat them, and that he may become a land-surveyor or a nurseryman in the King's Road. It is the fashion in France to conceal the rough deal board with a table-cloth; and, therefore,

we spend our money in mahogany, that we too may conceal its beauties in the same manner. It was the fashion to think Madeira the most wholesome of wines, it is now the fashion to think it the most unwholesome: it is the fashion to say that malt liquor is poison: it is the fashion to call wine poison. It was the fashion to dine at twelve, it is the fashion to dine at eight: it was the fashion to drink wine after dinner, it is the fashion to drink it at dinner. It is unfashionable to drink small-beer, it is unfashionable to drink your neighbour's health, to be helped twice from the same dish; but it is fashionable to display your tooth-pick case, and wash your mouth before a whole company. There is another corresponding fashion yet, but we pass that over.

It is the fashion to take snuff, it was not the fashion to take snuff, it was the fashion to take snuff, it will be the fashion not to take it. It was the fashion to stuff prisoners into dungeons, it is the fashion to build palaces for them. It was the fashion to go to Ranelagh, and to walk circles like horses in a mill. Ranelagh has fallen, and the circles are now walked in the tread-mill. Negro slavery has become unfashionable; so have boots and leather breeches. Rail-ways are becoming more fashionable than canals, and quadrilles have superseded country dances.

In former days it was the fashion to enter this squalling world, under the protection, as by the toils, of the fairer sex. Fashion has discovered that this is impossible, that we must all be throttled in the operation, and Mrs. Shandy must now lie-in in town, and her Juno Lucina must wear breeches. By double-headed Janus it is even so. Thus did punch become unfashionable, and smoking and swearing, except at the Custom House and the Old Bailey; just as the Habeas Corpus did for a time, and as apprenticeships and the Trinity Board will soon be-that is-we hope; and for somewhat a longer time.

Now, Dr. Parr and his wig were once the fashion, and so was Mrs. Fry: they are past and passing, as is Lady Morgan, Count Rumford, Dr. Burney, and Sir Humphrey Davy. It was once the fashion to pave a high road when it passed through a town, and there were bills for paving and lighting, which went hand in hand as inseparably as John and Richard of legal notoriety. But Doe and Roe go no longer in couples; the town that was paved is now unpaved, and mud is now the fashion as stones were before. It was the fashion to be afraid of France, it is now the fashion to fear the Scythian-and mad dogs; and Veluti is the last of his once fashionable race. It is fashionable to be purblind, to exclaim against steel traps, and to canonize poachers. Humanity is the fashion-philanthropy, ultra-philanthropy; and French wine is becoming more fashionable every day. The fashion of logic and metaphysics has been superseded by that of chemistry and geology; but, of all the sciences, the supreme in fashion are craniology and political economy.

And if freemasonry has become unfashionable, in spite of His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, the Athenæum, and the

United Service, and the Travellers, and the Verulam, and the Alfred, and the Asiatic, and the University have compensated. And the best fashion of all is, that as men club together in society for the sake of society, and converse, and mutual acquaintance,it is the fashion in the club, as it was in the chop-house, to dine alone in sulky state, and to shun your neighbours, as if a club had been an association for mutual fear, distrust, and hatred. The fashion of an Englishman's surliness is unalterable. Thank heaven, all fashions are not mutable as the summer breezes.

There are other immutable fashions: it is becoming time to render justice. There are some that even improve; fashions that become more fashionable. The Church was always given to seek its own aggrandizement, it was always given to persecuting every other church-all churches have always agreed to persecute each other, -and they all, at all times, joined admirably in persecuting those who dared to think. It was too good a fashion to change; and accordingly it remains. Nevertheless it is not the fashion to believe in ghosts; that view, at least, of the other world, is decidedly unfashionable, in spite of Mrs. Veale and John Wesley.

Thus has the fashion of horse-racing maintained its ground well, as has that of corrupting electors and managing parliaments, and suspending judgments in the Court of Chancery, and picking the pockets of clients and eating the oyster. In the matter of oysters themselves, Colchester also preserves its well-earned reputation.

Marriage was heretofore an affair of estates and money; and this is a fashion too which has grown with our growth. Cupid stands firmer than ever in the position which he has so long occupied. Hence, e contra, Love is out of fashion, as it is unfashionable for a wife to be of use, to know the nature, extent, operation, or expenditure, of her family-her family!-her husband's family; to attend to her children or to herself, to any part of herself but her dress. Unfashionable, indeed!-it is absolute disgrace; irreparable dishonour.

It was once the fashion to make pickles, and preserves, and work chair-bottoms. Mr. Burgess now makes the pickles, and Mr. Oakley the chairs. The fashion now is to beat on a pianoforte and squall. High and low, gentle and simple, the tailor's daughter, and the grocer's daughter, squall and thump on the pianoforte from eight to eight-and-twenty, or till they are married; and the farmer's daughter leaves the cows to Hodge to milk, and the butter and cheese to Cicely.

It is the fashion too to read Lord Byron and to despise Pope, to talk of Shakspeare and the Quarterly Review, to be learned and ological, and clever, and, born of rum and tallow, to quit Farringdon Without for Portman Square. Thus also it is the fashion, or was, to admire Washington Irving, and Harlequin Irving the sable denouncer of God's vengeance against backsliders; as it is to whistle the Freyschutz about the streets, and to wonder how much money Duke Smithson spent at the Paris coronation.

In days of yore, not long yore, it was the fashion at least to affect a virtue if they had it not; but, better taught, we now throw open the drawing-room to repentant, or not repentant, sinners; and virtue, very properly, has become the name which the poet called it long ago. The hierarchy itself, desirous no doubt to prove its charity, scorn not to sit down with these publicans and sinners. Fashion would be worthless if it were not worth something.

Wherefore do we send our children to Eton?-because it is the fashionable school; to Westminster, because it is the fashion; to Harrow, because it is the fashion; and not to Hazlewood, because it is not the fashion. It is the fashion to learn to be alternately slave and tyrant; and therefore my lord must fag for the tailor, or the tailor for my lord-it is all one. It is the fashion to ruin the morals, and therefore it is proper to spend money at Eton and Harrow. It is the fashion to go to Oxford, and therefore to Oxford we go; it is the fashion to suppose we learn Greek, and therefore we suppose it.

But these are of the permanent fashions; like the Court of Chancery: as in some other cases, we adhere to the bad and renounce the good. It is a misfortune that smoking and drinking punch are out of date: for since fashions must change, it would be better to change Greek than punch, and Oxford than smoking. We would even consent to take back again hair powder, or the duty on malt, in exchange. But, perhaps, the fashion of fourteen years' flogging upwards from the lowest form to the highest, will yet change; and then it will be the fashion to learn to swarm a pole, jump a ditch, and walk upon a rope.

There are hopes of any reformation when comedy has given place to elephants and monkeys, and a bowery and flowery walk in Kensington Gardens to a dusty dirty parade among horses and carriages, when the typography of Fust is revived in the shape of stereotype, and a man dare not drink porter after his cheese.

If there is a fashion in poetry and bonnets, so there is too in physic. And why not in physic as well as in eating. It is now the fashion of Sangrado; and why not?-since it all proceeds on the facile principle of imitation; the monkey principle. It is much easier, here too, to follow than to guide: it saves thinking. There is but one receipt, and any man can follow it-bleeding and hot water, hot water and bleeding-"seignare, purgare, iterum purgare et seignare." Calomel and salts-Cheltenham. We are all too full, and must be depleted; blood is a poisonous substance; it must be let out. And then there is the last new remedy:-Croton one year, barytes another, muriatic baths, prussic acid-champooing, or rhatany-root; just as Lord Harborough's beard succeeds to Lord Petersham's whiskers.

It is the fashion too for the plague and the typhus not to be contagious, and it is the fashion to have the tic-douloureux, and bile-and to cultivate conversation and society by crowding three hundred people into the room that might hold twenty. As it was,