is tribe. It is with him alone we have to do. The
"martinet" is a person who is all his life violently busied in
endeavouring to be a perfect gentleman, and who _almost_ succeeds. He
misses the point by over-stepping it. He is like one of those greyhounds
which outrun the hare fleetly enough, but cannot "_take_" her when they
have done so. They have a little too much speed, and a little too little
tact. The martinet is always bent upon thinking, saying, doing, and having,
every thing after a nicer fashion than other people, until his nicety runs
into downright mannerism; all his ideas become "clipped taffeta," and all
his eggs are known to have "two yolks." He rarely comes of age or is
thoroughly ripe till near forty, before which he may be a little of the
precise fop, and after which he changes to the somewhat foppish precisian,
which is the best definition of him. He would be an excellent member of
society were he not a little too nice for its every-day work, which, to
speak a truth in metaphor, will not always admit of white gloves. He is
remarkably consistent in all his proceedings, however, and the outward man
is a perfect and complete type of the inward, and _vice versa_. His soul
is never out of pumps and silk stockings, and picks its way amidst the
little mental puddles and cross-roads of this world with a chariness of
step, which is at once edifying and amusing. Of inward show _he_ is not
less "elaborate" than of outward; and, though a descendant of Eve, takes
equal care of the clothing of both mind and body.

Were his tailor to be abandoned enough to attempt to palm upon him a coat
of the very best Yorkshire, instead of the very best Wiltshire broad-cloth,
(an enormity of which--_horresco referens_--he was once very near being
the victim,) the one would be sure to lose, if discovered, the best of his
customers, and the other the best of a month's sleep. If he wears a wig,
his expenditure with his _peruquier_ is never less than five-and-twenty
guineas a-year. His cigars, though he smokes little, cost him nearly as
much. His hat is water-proof; his stop-watch and repeater are of a
scapement that never varies more than six seconds in the twelve months
from the time-piece at the Observatory at Greenwich, where he has a friend,
who is so good as sometimes to compare notes with him. By the advice of
his boot-maker--who, by the way, has some knowledge of the length of his
foot--he never puts on a new pair until they ar