nding as much time in be-painting his cheeks on a summer morning,
as Beau Brummell, of departed memory, ever wasted in tying his cravat.
And so it has ever been--so it will ever be; man is not only a
two-legged unfledged animal, but he is also a vain imitative ape, fond
of his own dear visage, blind to his deformities, and ever desirous of
setting himself off to the best advantage. It is of no use quarrelling
with ourselves for this physiological fact--for we presume it to be
one of the best ascertained phenomena connected with the genus
_homo_--it is better to take it as we find it; and if we cannot hope
to cure man of the absurdity any time this side of the millennium, let
us try if we cannot turn the failing to some account, and make it
useful as well as ornamental.

The chief quarrel to be picked with man for his dressing propensities,
is on the ground that he not only hides and disfigures the fair
proportions bestowed on him by his Maker, but that he ever and anon
loads himself with such masses of useless incongruities, that the very
end and object of his care are stultified. Instead of making himself
smart, pretty, becoming, beautiful--or any other word that you can
find in the dandy's dictionary--he frequently succeeds in making
himself positively ugly--frightful, in the pure abstract sense of the
term--or detestable, in the lingo of the Stultzean tribe--and
relapses, as a Frenchman would say, from civism to brutism: _Ah! quel
animal que l'homme!_

But let it not be supposed that we speak of man only, as applied to
that great branch of the species designated by the most experienced
naturalists as _homo vir_; it is quite as true of the other moiety,
the _homo femina_. If it be possible that a woman should ever be made
frightful by any thing except age, then it is surely by dress; if a
woman never does a foolish thing in any other way, yet at least she
errs in her habiliments; if she be fickle at all, (and speak to the
fact, ye disappointed bachelors and ye complaisant husbands!) in what
is she more fickle than in dress? We might waste a life in finding a
suitable simile for her volatility in this matter: rainbows with
changing colours, water on a windy day, the wind itself in the month
of March, the much-desiderated perpetual motion; all are feeble
similes to describe a woman's fickleness in dress. Shall we liken it
to her tongue's untiring play? or shall we not rather say that it is a
psychological fact standin