upon the great
science of Things in General, which Teufelsdroeckh is supposed to have
professed at the university of Nobody-knows-where. Now, without
intending to adopt a too rigid standard of morals, we own that we
doubt a little the propriety of offering to the public a treatise on
Things in General, under the name and in the form of an Essay on
Dress. For ourselves, advanced as we unfortunately are in the journey
of life, far beyond the period when dress is practically a matter of
interest, we have no hesitation in saying, that the real subject of
the work is to us more attractive than the ostensible one. But this is
probably not the case with the mass of readers. To the younger portion
of the community, which constitutes everywhere the very great
majority, the subject of dress is one of intense and paramount
importance. An author who treats it appeals, like the poet, to the
young men and maidens--_virginibus puerisque_,--and calls upon them,
by all the motives which habitually operate most strongly upon their
feelings, to buy his book. When, after opening their purses for this
purpose, they have carried home the work in triumph, expecting to find
in it some particular instruction in regard to the tying of their
neckcloths, or the cut of their corsets, and meet with nothing better
than a dissertation on Things in General, they will,--to use the
mildest term--not be in very good humour. If the last improvements in
legislation, which we have made in this country, should have found
their way to England, the author, we think, would stand some chance of
being _Lynched_. Whether his object in this piece of _supercherie_ be
merely pecuniary profit, or whether he takes a malicious pleasure in
quizzing the Dandies, we shall not undertake to say. In the latter
part of the work, he devotes a separate chapter to this class of
persons, from the tenour of which we should be disposed to conclude,
that he would consider any mode of divesting them of their property
very much in the nature of a spoiling of the Egyptians.

"The only thing about the work, tending to prove that it is what it
purports to be, a commentary on a real German treatise, is the style,
which is a sort of Babylonish dialect, not destitute, it is true, of
richness, vigour, and at times a sort of singular felicity of expression,
but very strongly tinged throughout with the peculiar idiom of the German
language. This quality in the style, however, may be a mere resu