a well-set ring may ornament an
aristocratic finger, (though aristocratic fingers, like aristocratic
hands, as Byron observes, need no ornament to tell their origin,) who
but an Otaheitan would admire the application of them to the gouty
toes of some "fine old English gentleman?" Usefulness first, then, and
ornament afterwards; think first of what you actually want for your
health or comfort; cut your coat upon that pattern, clap on your lace
afterwards; but enrich it only to improve its appearance, not to
interfere with, to conceal, or to alter its original destination.

To begin, however, methodically, let us take what are commonly
understood by well-dressed English people of the present day, and let
us criticise them from top to toe. And first, then, of a gentleman's
head--_le chef_, as the French call it--and the _chapeau_, its present
gear. What a covering! what a termination to the capital of that
pillar of the creation, Man! what an ungraceful, mis-shapen, useless,
and uncomfortable appendage to the seat of reason--the brain-box!
Does it protect the head from either heat, cold, or wet? Does it set
off any of natural beauty of the human cranium? Are its lines in
harmony with, or in becoming contrast to, the expressive features of
the face? Is it comfortable, portable, durable, or cheap? What
qualities, either of use or ornament, has it in its favour that it
should be the crowning point of a well-dressed man's toilet? The hat
is, beyond all doubt, one of the strangest vestimental anomalies of
the nineteenth century.

The history of the hat is this:--The simplest covering for a man's
head after his own unshorn locks--(do not remind us of the matted and
_living_ locks of the Indians or Hottentots)--must have been something
like the Greek skull-cap. This we hold to have been the root, or
nucleus, of the hat; and yet even this cap had a fault in point of
utility, for it failed to shadow the eyes: and on the earliest Greek
monuments we find a cap with a wide brim appended, or a flattish
straw-hat following close upon the Phrygian bonnet. A light flattish
hat has its recommendation in a warm country, but it will not do for
the winds and storms of a northern clime; and hence all the old Gauls,
the northern nations, the Tartars, and the peasants of Europe, for
many a long century wore a modified cap--sometimes swelling out into
ornamental proportions, at others shrinking into the primitive
simplicity of the Phrygian or