too good for it; for a hat is good for something, though there is more chimney-top than beauty in it. It furnishes shade to the eyes, and has not always an ill look, if well-proportioned. The coat is a sheer piece of mechanical ugliness. The frock-coat is another matter, except as to the collar, which, in its present rolled or bolstered shape, is always ugly. As to the great-coat, it makes a man look either like a man in a sack, or a shorn bear. It is cloth upon cloth, clumsiness made clumsier, sometimes thrice over, cloth waistcoat, cloth coat, cloth great-coat, "three-piled hyperbole." It is only proper for travellers, coachmen, and others who require to have no drapery in the way. A cloak is the only handsome over-all.

a

What a

The neck-cloth is worthy of the coat. heaping of monstrosity on monstrosity! The woollen horse-collar is bad enough; yet, as if this were not sufficient, a linen one must be superadded. Men must look as if they were twice seized with symbols of apoplexy, the horse-collar to shorten the neck, and the linen-collar to squeeze it. Some man with a desperately bad throat must have invented the neckcloth, especially as it had a padding or pudding in it when it first came up. His neck could not have been fit to be seen. It must have been like a pole, or a withered stalk; or else he was some faded fat dandy, ashamed of his double chin. There can be no objection to people's looking as well as they can contrive, young or old; but it is a little too much to set a fashion, which, besides being deformed, is injurious. The man was excusable, because he knew no better;

but it is no wonder if painters and poets, and young Germans, and other romantic personages, have attempted to throw off the nuisance, especially such as have lived in the South. The neck-cloth is ugly, is useless, is dangerous to some, and begets effeminate fear of colds with all. The English, in consequence of their living more in-doors than they used, fancy they have too many reasons for muffling themselves up, not aware that the more they do so, the more they subject themselves to what they dread; and that it is by a general sense of warmth in the person they are to be made comfortable and secure, and not by filling up every creek and cranny of their dress to the very chin.

But some may tell us they cannot feel that general warmth, without thus muffling themselves up. True, if they accustom themselves to it; but it is the custom itself which is in fault. They can have the warmth without it, if they please; just as well as they can without muffling up their eyes. "How can you

go with your body naked?" said a not very wise person to an Indian. "How can you go with your face naked?" said the Indian. "I am used to it," replied the man. 66 Well, and I am used to the other," rejoined the Indian: “I am all face." Now it will not exactly do to be "all face" in a civilized country; the police would object: Piccadilly is not Paradise. But then it is not necessary to be "all muffle."

The ladies in the reign of Edward I. once took to wearing a cloth round their throats and ears, in a way which made a poet exclaim, "Par Dieu! I have often thought in my heart, when I have seen a lady so

closely tied up, that her neck-cloth was nailed to her chin." There is a figure of her in Mr. Planché's book, p. 115. Now this was the precise appearance of a neck-cloth some years back, when it was worn with a pad or stiffener, and the point of the chin reposed in it; nay, it is so at present with many. The stock looks even more stiff and apoplectic, especially if there is a red face above it. When dandies faint, the neck-cloth is always the first thing loosed, as the stays are with a lady.

By the way, the dandies wear stays too! We have some regard for these gentlemen, because they have reckoned great names among them in times of old, and have some very clever and amiable ones now, and manly withal too. They may err, we grant, from an excess of sympathy with what is admired, as well as from mere folly or effeminacy. But whatever approximates a man's shape to a woman's is a deformity. We have seen some of them with hips, upon which they should have gone carrying pails, and cried "milk!" And who was it that clapped those monstrous protuberances upon the bosoms of our brave life-guards? No masculine dandy, we may be sure. A man's breast should look as if it would take a hundred blows upon it, like a glorious anvil, and not be deformed with a frightened wadding; still less resemble the bosom that tenderness peculiarly encircles, and that is so beautiful because it is so different from his own.

ENGLISH WOMEN VINDICATED.

LENDER, complaining of the masquerade trick that had been put on him at the close of the comedy, says that he had "married Anne Page," and "she was a great lubberly boy." Far better were a surprise of the reverse order, which should betray itself in some tone of voice, or sentiment, or other unlooked-for emanation of womanhood, while we were thinking ourselves quietly receiving the visit of lubberly himself, or rather some ingenious cousin of his; and of some such pleasure we have had a taste, if not in the shape of any Viola or Julia, or other such flattering palpability, yet in that of a fair invisible; for we recollect well our Indicator friend, "Old Boy," who sends us the following letter; but what if we have discovered, meanwhile, that "Old Boy" is no boy at all, nor man neither, but a pretty woman, and one that we think this a pretty occasion for unmasking; since, in the hearts of the male sex, English women will find defenders enough: but few of themselves have the courage to come forward. Even our would-be "Old Boy" cannot do it but in disguise; which though a thing very well for her to assume, it is no less becoming in us, we think, on such an occasion to take off, seeing that it gives the

right touching effect to that pretty petulance in her letter, and that half-laughing tone of ill-treatment, which somehow has such a feminine breath in it, and must double the wish to be on her side.

Wonderful is the effect produced in a letter by the tone in which we read it or suppose it written, and by the knowledge of its being male or female. The one before us would be a good "defiance" to "Old Crony," were its signature true; but to know that it is written by a woman gives it a new interest, and quite another sort of music. Cannot we see the face glow, and the dimples playing with a frown; and hear the light, breathing voice bespeaking the question in its favor? Does it not make "Old Crony" himself glad to be "defied to the uttermost?"

TO THE EDITOR.

Dear old Friend with a new face, -Your correspondent, "Old Crony," seems as deficient in temper as in judgment, in his brusque remarks upon the dress and gait of our fair countrywomen; nor can it be allowed him that he has chosen the best place to study the finest specimens of English women, either as regards refinement in dress or bearing. The women who most frequent bazaars and fashionable drapers' are generally the most vacant-minded and petty creatures in existence; who wander from one lounge to another, seeking to dispel the ennui which torments. them, by any frivolous kill-time. I really loathe the sight of such places, and think they have done much mischief among the idle and ignorant part of my countrywomen. But, to return to the subject, I main