e of land on his back?
_Keineswegs_, By no manner of means! The Sumptuary Laws have fallen
into such a state of desuetude as was never before seen. Our
fashionable coat is an amphibium between barn-sack and drayman's
doublet. The cloth of it is studiously coarse; the colour a speckled
soot-black or rust-brown gray; the nearest approach to a Peasant's.
And for shape,--thou shouldst see it! The last consummation of the
year now passing over us is definable as Three Bags; a big bag for the
body, two small bags for the arms, and by way of collar a hem! The
first Antique Cheruscan who, of felt-cloth or bear's-hide, with bone
or metal needle, set about making himself a coat, before Tailors had
yet awakened out of Nothing,--did not he make it even so? A loose wide
poke for body, with two holes to let out the arms; this was his
original coat: to which holes it was soon visible that two small loose
pokes, or sleeves, easily appended, would be an improvement.

'Thus has the Tailor-art, so to speak, overset itself, like most other
things; changed its centre-of-gravity; whirled suddenly over from
zenith to nadir. Your Stulz, with huge somerset, vaults from his high
shopboard down to the depths of primal savagery,--carrying much along
with him! For I will invite thee to reflect that the Tailor, as
topmost ultimate froth of Human Society, is indeed swift-passing,
evanescent, slippery to decipher; yet significant of much, nay of all.
Topmost evanescent froth, he is churned-up from the very lees, and
from all intermediate regions of the liquor. The general outcome he,
visible to the eye, of what men aimed to do, and were obliged and
enabled to do, in this one public department of symbolising themselves
to each other by covering of their skins. A smack of all Human Life
lies in the Tailor: its wild struggles towards beauty, dignity,
freedom, victory; and how, hemmed-in by Sedan and Huddersfield, by
Nescience, Dulness, Prurience, and other sad necessities and laws of
Nature, it has attained just to this: Gray savagery of Three Sacks
with a hem!

'When the very Tailor verges towards Sansculottism, is it not ominous?
The last Divinity of poor mankind dethroning himself; sinking _his_
taper too, flame downmost, like the Genius of Sleep or of Death;
admonitory that Tailor time shall be no more!--For, little as one
could advise Sumptuary Laws at the present epoch, yet nothing is
clearer than that where ranks do actually exist, strict divisi