, or
with his peculiar fancies, and each one had its precise place in a sort
of _epos_, as certainly as each of the persons in the confusion of a
pantomime or a farce has his own position and functions.

After all, he was himself his own greatest curiosity. He had come to
manhood just after the period of gold-laced waistcoats, small-clothes,
and shoe-buckles, otherwise he would have been long a living memorial of
these now antique habits. It happened to be his lot to preserve down to
us the earliest phase of the pantaloon dynasty. So, while the rest of
the world were booted or heavy shod, his silk-stockinged feet were
thrust into pumps of early Oxford cut, and the predominant garment was
the surtout, blue in colour, and of the original make before it came to
be called a frock. Round his neck was wrapped an ante-Brummelite
neckerchief (not a tie), which projected in many wreaths like a great
poultice--and so he took his walks abroad, a figure which he could
himself have turned into admirable ridicule.

One of the mysteries about him was, that his clothes, though unlike any
other person's, were always old. This characteristic could not even be
accounted for by the supposition that he had laid in a sixty years'
stock in his youth, for they always appeared to have been a good deal
worn. The very umbrella was in keeping--it was of green silk, an
obsolete colour ten years ago--and the handle was of a peculiar
crosier-like formation in cast-horn, obviously not obtainable in the
market. His face was ruddy, but not with the ruddiness of youth; and,
bearing on his head a Brutus wig of the light-brown hair which had long
ago legitimately shaded his brow, when he stood still--except for his
linen, which was snowy white--one might suppose that he had been shot
and stuffed on his return home from college, and had been sprinkled with
the frowzy mouldiness which time imparts to stuffed animals and other
things, in which a semblance to the freshness of living nature is vainly
attempted to be preserved. So if he were motionless; but let him speak,
and the internal freshness was still there, an ever-blooming garden of
intellectual flowers. His antiquated costume was no longer grotesque--it
harmonised with an antiquated courtesy and high-bred gentleness of
manner, which he had acquired from the best sources, since he had seen
the first company in his day, whether for rank or genius. And
conversation and manner were far from exhausting his