elves, lead to
important revolutions,--let us glance for a moment, and with the
faintest light of Clothes-Philosophy, on what may be called the
Habilatory Class of our fellow-men. Here too overlooking, where so
much were to be looked on, the million spinners, weavers, fullers,
dyers, washers, and wringers, that puddle and muddle in their dark
recesses, to make us Clothes, and die that we may live,--let us but
turn the reader's attention upon two small divisions of mankind, who,
like moths, may be regarded as Cloth-animals, creatures that live,
move and have their being in Cloth: we mean, Dandies and Tailors.

In regard to both which small divisions it may be asserted without
scruple, that the public feeling, unenlightened by Philosophy, is at
fault; and even that the dictates of humanity are violated. As will
perhaps abundantly appear to readers of the two following chapters.

CHAPTER X

THE DANDIACAL BODY

First, touching Dandies, let us consider, with some scientific
strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A Dandy is a Clothes-wearing
Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing
of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse and person is
heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes
wisely and well: so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress.
The all-importance of Clothes, which a German Professor of unequalled
learning and acumen, writes his enormous Volume to demonstrate, has
sprung up in the intellect of the Dandy without effort, like an
instinct of genius; he is inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What
Teufelsdroeckh would call a 'Divine Idea of Cloth' is born with him;
and this, like other such Ideas, will express itself outwardly, or
wring his heart asunder with unutterable throes.

But, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly makes his
Idea an Action; shows himself in peculiar guise to mankind; walks
forth, a witness and living Martyr to the eternal worth of Clothes. We
called him a Poet: is not his body the (stuffed) parchment-skin
whereon he writes, with cunning Huddersfield dyes, a Sonnet to his
mistress' eyebrow? Say, rather, an Epos, and _Clotha Virumque cano_,
to the whole world, in Macaronic verses, which he that runs may read.
Nay, if you grant, what seems to be admissible, that the Dandy has a
Thinking-principle in him, and some notions of Time and Space, is
there not in this Life-devotedness to Cloth, in this so will