One, calling himself a beau of the last century, for the century is not long since passed, says, that although he does not mean to represent himself as a gallant during the Revolution, or that he was old enough to carry arms in Shay's rebellion, yet, says he, "I was most certainly born, and made some advance in belles lettres; that is to say, in A. B. C., &c., before the commencement of the nineteenth century, and had acquired a pretty considerable many notions of the fitness of things before midnight of December 31st, 1799, which is now very generally admitted, by historians and chronologers of the present day, to be about the last that was seen of the eighteenth century. I have consequently lived to see many mighty revolutions in kingdoms and states, and I have also lived to see many mightier and more important changes in fashion and dress. I have seen periwigs, buckskin breeches and waistcoats, or in modern sartorial phraseology, vests, with flaps and low descending pockets reaching to the knees, drop quietly into the grave. I have seen coats, cut after a pattern of the middle of the eighteenth century, with scarcely any collar, and I have seen them succeeded, in the early part of the nineteenth, by coats with little beside collar; coats the apex of whose collar towered above and overlooked the apex of the wearer. I have seen Hessian boots, Suwarrow boots, white top boots, swell back boots, laced boots start into existence and start out of it. I came into the world as the first generation of square toed boots were about going out of it; and iny feet are, at this moment, after an interval of -years, no matter how many, incased in a pair of square toes No. 2. I have witnessed the birth and death of two distinct races of sharp toed shoes. I have seen them both kick up a dust in a ball room; and then, thank heaven, kick the bucket. I have worn out many a pair of round-toed shoes, and do not despair of wearing out many more as soon as they come in fashion again. In the year 1817, I bought in the East Indies, a second hand vest sold by its owner because it was out of fashion; I have it yet, and it is nearly as good as new, although it has been in and out of fashion. five times respectively since I bought it."

"But a few years since, the snow-white and nicely plaited ruffle was prevented from fluttering in the breeze by the jewelled breastpin; and now, whenever I go abroad, I see the idealess, soulless, worshippers of fashion, as carefully hiding every appearance of linen, whether clean or dirty, as a fashionable belle does a gray hair or a freckle, a hole in her stocking, or a flaw in her reputation. An Englishman and a Frenchman disputing upon the comparative improvements their respective nations had made in dress-"Sare," said the exterminator of frogs, "in la belle France we have invent de roffel, one grand ornament for de hand.” "Very true," responded the sturdy Briton, "but we English have improved upon your invention, for we have added a shirt to your ruffle."

"But alas!" the glory is departed" from among us of inventing the shirt. Fashion has decreed that the very name of "shirt" like

petticoat-my fashionable paper blushes with fashionable modesty, as I write the words so near to each other on its pure surface-is indecent and not fit to be used by "good society," and even were that not the case, the word must soon perforce become obsolete, because the thing that the word represents has ceased to exist among the votaries of that despotic goddess. Catching inspiration and enthusiasın from the spirit of reform and retrenchment that has invaded the cabinet old and new, of General Jackson, and that characterizes the councils of William the IV; the worshippers of Fashion have at one blow lopped away the entire garment, substituting false wristbands and false bosoms, flinging at the feet of the weeping genius of banished cleanliness, "the empty and bloody skin of the immolated victims." Here, it was to be hoped, would have ceased the destruction, but no, the demon of Fashion and Folly issued another decree, and also collars, and false wristbands, even paper ones disappearedthe false bosom did, indeed, struggle, and gasp for breath, but it was the feeble and ineffectual writhing of a sickly calf in the folds of the Boa Constrictor-after a double-breasted vest, and the false bosom was no more, even that "horrible shadow," that "unreal mockery” vanished in eternal night. Stocks rose, not U. S. 5 per cent., for 1836, nor Ohio sixes, but neck stocks, and the false collar, left its post on the cheek bone of the exquisite, the dickey ceased to excoriate the lobe of the dandy's ear, the false wristband, whether of paper or well starched cotton, retreated up the coat sleeve. A Sanhedrim of tailors decreed that the vest should be double breasted and padded, and its upper button should be located on the shoulder blade, and the "bosom friend," the last feeble and expiring relic of cleanliness, once the pride and boast, as well as the distinguishing mark of a gentleman, was annihilated, smothered, like Desdemona, by its nearest and dearest friend, hitherto, alike its foil and its ornament, its contrast and its comparison-and now

"Full many a skin, that sweat and dirt begrime,

The double breasted vests of Fashion hide,

But I drop the parody, not from inability to follow it further, but because I hold it as a species of high treason to reveal any more secrets of the toilet masculine. I have but one consolation under this affliction, namely the hope that shirts may possibly once more come into fashion. Yes, I have another comfort: this abominable and worse than Moloch sacrifice of decency of appearance, as well as reality, has not invaded the fair, for though the garment is with them hidden, there were once and are even now certain hors d'œuvres, outworks, as it were, that bear testimony to its existence among the ladies of the present age."

Another observer of the present and past, thus moralizes upon this subject:

Dress, says he, that was at first our shame, has become our pride;

and we, therefore, glory in our shame. It was first used for our covering; it is now made for display. A fashionable dress may hardly be defined as a covering; it is so scanty, that the plainest coat is half show. The sober drab of the Quaker, cut in straight lines, is yet ornamented in its own way. It is cut in a shape that gratifies the wearer, and that may make him proud of his humility.

All our fashions are fleeting, and the form of a cloud is not more liable to change. In the shoe and the boot, those minor and inferior parts of dress, what change may come ere we have shuffled off this square-toed pair! All human inventions, however, have a limit; for all combinations may be exhausted, and new fashions, like new boots, are but imitations of the old. Of shoes we remember the duck-billed shape, the pointed, the rounded, and the square; shoes horizontal, that exactly coincide with a flat surface, and others so much hollowed, that the heel and toe only leave a track in the sand. Others are turned up at an angle, equal to the eighth of a circle, and my toes are now pinched by a pair, small and square, of the exact fashion that has for centuries prevailed in China, that happy country where wise laws make the fashions unchangeable. Boots have been more mutable than shoes, but after a course of changes return to an old form. In the sculptures around the Parthenon, the work of Phidias himself, the equestrians have boots of as finical a fit and wrinkle as any in later times. Their form is that of the old white tops.

There are boots military, civic, and dramatic; there is the bootee, which is evidently a sheer abridgement, and the jack boot, that would not be filled after having swallowed them all.

The fashion at one time requires the boot to be wide and stiff in the back, and at another close and limber. Suwarrow and Wellington have a greater name among cordwainers than among soldiers. Of their victories, the remembrance will fade away, but their boots promise immortality. I remember my first pair of Suwarrows; they made a part of the great equipment, with which I came from college into the world. Four skeins of silk did I purchase of a mercer, and equal expense did I incur with the sweeper, for aid in twisting them into tassels for the boots. I would incur double the expense now to have the same feeling of dignity that I enjoyed then, when walking in those boots! I stepped long and slowly, and the iron heels, which it pleased me to set firmly on the pavement, made a greater clatter than a troop of horse-"shod with felt." But if I wore them with pride it was not without suffering; nor did I get myself into them without labour. Before I attempted to draw them on, I rubbed the inside with soap, and powdered my instep and heel with flour. I next drew the handle of the two forks through the straps, lest they should cut into my fingers, and then commenced the "tug of war." I contracted myself into the form of a chicken, trussed for the spit, and whatever patience and perseverance Providence had given me, I tested to the utmost. I cursed Suwarrow for VOL. I.-2 A

a Scythian, and wished his boots "hung in their own straps." I danced round the room upon one foot many times, and after several intervals for respiration and pious ejaculation, I succeeded in getting my toes into trouble, or I may say purgatory. Corns I had as many as the most fanatic pilgrim would desire for peas in his shoes, yet I walked through the crowd (who were probably admiring their own boots too much to bestow a thought upon mine,) as if I were a carpet knight pelonaising upon rose leaves. I was in torment, yet there was not a cloud upon my brow,

Spem vulta simulat, premit altum corde dolorem.

I could not have suffered for principle as I suffered for those memorable boots.

The coat I wore, was such as fashion enjoined; the skirts were long and narrow, like a swallow's tail, two-thirds at least of the whole length. The portion above the waist composed the other third. The waist was directly beneath the shoulders; the collar was a huge roll reaching above the ears, and there were two lines of brilliant buttons in front. There were nineteen buttons in a row. The pantaloons, (over which I wore the boots,) were of non-elastic corduroy. It would be unjust to the tailor to say that they were fitted like my skin; for they sat a great deal closer. When I took them off, my legs were like fluted pillars, grooved with the cords of the pantaloons. The hat that surmounted this dress had three-quarters of an inch rim, and a low tapering crown. It was circled by a ribbon two inches wide.

There is no modern dress that does not deform the human shape, and some national costumes render it more grotesque than any natural deformity. Dress, at present, seems as much worn to conceal the form, as language is used to hide and not to express the thoughts. In a fashionable costume, all are forms alike; there is no difference between Antinous or Esop; Hyperion or a Satyr."

We know nothing so revolting to the sense of grave people of both sexes as was the first use among us of ladies' pantalettes, which came into use slowly and cautiously about the year 1830. We well remember the first female who had the hardihood to appear abroad in their display; she was a tall girl in her minority, always accompanied by her mother, the wife of a British officer, come then to settle among us. Her pantalettes were courageously displayed among us, with a half length petticoat. Often we heard the remark in serious circles, that it was an abomination unto the Lord to wear men's apparel. The fashion, however, went first for children till it got familiar to the eyes, and then ladies, little by little, followed after, till in time they became pretty general as a "defence from cold in winter," and for-we know not what-in summer!

FURNITURE AND EQUIPAGE.

"Dismiss a real elegance, a little used,

For monstrous novelty and strange disguise."

THE tide of fashion which overwhelms every thing in its onward course, has almost effaced every trace of what our forefathers possessed or used in the way of household furniture, or travelling equipage. Since the year 1800 the introduction of foreign luxury, caused by the influx of wealth, has been yearly effecting successive changes in those articles, so much so, that the former simple articles, which contented, as they equally served the purposes of our forefathers, could hardly be conceived. Such as they were, they descended acceptably unchanged from father to son and son's son, and presenting at the era of our Independence, precisely the same family picture which had been seen in the earliest annals of the town.

Formerly there were no sideboards, and when they were first introduced after the Revolution, they were much smaller and less expensive than now. Formerly they had couches of worsted damask, and only in very affluent families, in lieu of what we now call sofas or lounges. Plain people used settees and settles-the latter had a bed concealed in the seat, and by folding the top of it outwards to the front, it exposed the bed and widened the place for the bed to be spread upon it. This, homely as it might now be regarded, was a common sitting room appendage, and was a proof of more attention to comfort than display. It had, as well as the settee, a very high back of plain boards, and the whole was of white pine, generally unpainted and whitened well with unsparing scrubbing. Such was in the poet's eye, when pleading for his sofa,

"But restless was the seat, the back erect

Distress'd the weary loins, that felt no ease."

They were a very common article in very good houses, and were generally the proper property of the oldest members of the familyunless occasionally used to stretch the weary length of tired boys. They were placed before the fireplaces in the winter to keep the back guarded from wind and cold. Formerly there were no windsor chairs, and fancy chairs are still more modern. Their chairs of the genteelest kind, were of mahogany or red walnut, (once a great substitute for mahogany in all kinds of furniture, tables, &c.) or else they were of rush bottoms, and made of maple posts and slats, with high backs and perpendicular. Instead of japanned waiters as now, they had mahogany tea boards and round tea tables, which being

When the first windsor chairs were introduced, they were universally green