. I have seen a
country-clergyman, with a one-story intellect and a one-horse
vocabulary, who has consumed his valuable time (and mine) freely,
in developing an opinion of a brother-minister's discourse which
would have been abundantly characterized by a peach-down-lipped
sophomore in the one word--SLOW. Let us discriminate, and be shy
of absolute proscription. I am omniverbivorous by nature and
training. Passing by such words as are poisonous, I can swallow
most others, and chew such as I cannot swallow.

Dandies are not good for much, but they are good for something.
They invent or keep in circulation those conversational blank
checks or counters just spoken of, which intellectual capitalists
may sometimes find it worth their while to borrow of them. They
are useful, too, in keeping up the standard of dress, which, but
for them, would deteriorate, and become, what some old fools would
have it, a matter of convenience, and not of taste and art. Yes, I
like dandies well enough,--on one condition.

--What is that, Sir?--said the divinity-student.

--That they have pluck. I find that lies at the bottom of all true
dandyism. A little boy dressed up very fine, who puts his finger
in his mouth and takes to crying, if other boys make fun of him,
looks very silly. But if he turns red in the face and knotty in
the fists, and makes an example of the biggest of his assailants,
throwing off his fine Leghorn and his thickly-buttoned jacket, if
necessary, to consummate the act of justice, his small toggery
takes on the splendors of the crested helmet that frightened
Astyanax. You remember that the Duke said his dandy officers were
his best officers. The "Sunday blood," the super-superb sartorial
equestrian of our annual Fast-day, is not imposing or dangerous.
But such fellows as Brummel and D'Orsay and Byron are not to be
snubbed quite so easily. Look out for "la main de fer sous le gant
de velours," (which I printed in English the other day without
quotation-marks, thinking whether any scarabaeus criticus would add
this to his globe and roll in glory with it into the newspapers,
--which he didn't do it, in the charming pleonasm of the London
language, and therefore I claim the sole merit of exposing the
same.) A good many powerful and dangerous people have had a
decided dash of dandyism about them. There was Alcibiades, the
"curled son of Clinias," an accomplished young man, but what would
be called a "swell" in