MAN, MANNERS, AND A STORY WITH A MORAL TO IT.

"Les hommes font les lois, les femmes font les mœurs."-DE SEGUR.

"L'HOMME est un animal!" said a French orator, by way of peroration to his first speech in the Chamber of Deputies; "Man is an animal !”—and there he stopped. He found his subject exhausted, and he sat down in confusion. Thereupon his own familiar friend arose, and suggested that it was desirable that the honourable gentlemen's speech should be printed, with a portrait of the author!

The definition is, as far as it goes, a plagiarism from Plato. In the Apophthegmata of Diogenes Laertius it is stated that Plato defined Man as an animal with two legs and without feathers. The definition having been generally approved of, Diogenes went into the school of the philosopher, carrying with him a cock, which he had stripped of his plumage. "Here," said he, “is Plato's man!" Plato saw that his definition needed improvement, and he added to it, "with broad nails." He might have further said, "and needing something in place of feathers."

So much depends upon this substitute, and so much more is thought of habits than of manners-that is, morals—and of the makers of the former than the teachers of the latter, that it is popularly and properly said, "The tailor makes the man." No doubt of it; and tailors are far better paid than tutors. The Nugees keep country-houses and recline in carriages; the philosophers are accounted of as nuga, and plod on foot to give golden instruction for small thanks and a few pence. Their device, if they are ever so ennobled as to be thought worthy of one, might be that of the patriotic ladies of Prussia, who, before the time

when their country became a satrapy of Muscovy, exchanged their golden adornments for an iron ring, on which was engraved the legend, "Ich gab Gold um Eisen"—I gave gold for iron.

This being the case, it is little to be wondered at that man is more careful about his dress than his instruction. The well-dressed man looks, at all events, like a man well to do; and how profound is the respect of the world for a man who may be catalogued as "well to do!" That man thoroughly understood the meaning of the term who, when on his trial for murder, and anticipating an acquittal, invited his counsel to dinner. The invitation was accepted, but, the verdict rendering the inviter incapable of even ordering a dinner for himself, the intended guest frowned on the convict, and went and dined with the prosecutor.

Philosophy has done its best to cure man of vanity in dress; but philosophy has been vain,—and so has man. "For a man to be fantastic and effeminate in attire," says Stobæus, "is unpardonable. It is next to Sardanapalus's spinning among women. such I would say, Art thou not ashamed, when Nature hath made thee a man, to make thyself a woman?"

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Seneca hath something to the same purpose, and not altogether inapplicable in our days. "Some of the manly sex among us," says he, are so effeminate, that they would rather have the commonwealth out of order, than their hair; they are more solicitous about trimming and sprucing up their heads, than they are of their health or of the safety of the public; and are more anxious to be fine than virtuous." Sir Walter Raleigh asserts that "No man is esteemed for gay garments, but by fools and women "—an assertion which shows that his philosophy and his civility were both in a ragged condition. Sir Matthew Hale throws the blame where it ought to be borne, when he declares that the vanity of loving fine clothes and new fashions, and valuing ourselves by them, is one of the most childish pieces of folly that can be."

The philosophy of the judge is "truer steel" than that of the soldier. But, for philosophy in describing a dress, I know nothing

that can surpass that of the poor Irishman, who, looking down at his own garment of million tatters, smilingly said that it was "made of holes."

There is very good philosophy in the story of Nessus and his tunic. We all know how the story is told in history, and that it therefore cannot be true. Apollodorus and Pausanias, Diodorus, Ovid, and Seneca, have all told the same tale, without guessing at the truth which lies hid in it. It is to this effect:-When Hercules was on his way to the court of Ceyx, king of Trachinia, in company with his "lady," Dejanira, the travellers came to the swollen river of Evenus. Nessus, the centaur, politely carried the lady over, and became very rude to her on the opposite bank. The stalwart husband, from the other shore, observing what was going on, sent one of his shafts, dipped in the poison of the Lernæan Hydra, right into the centaur's heart. Nessus, while dying, presented his shirt-that is, his tunic-to Dejanira, informing her that if she could persuade Hercules to wear it, he could never behave to her otherwise than as a gentleman. Now, as he never had yet so comported himself-for he was a dreadful bully-Dejanira accepted the gift; and, as the hero was soon after found flirting with his old love Iole, and was vain of his appearance, she sent the gay garment to him, and he had no sooner donned it than death clasped him, and the hero was transferred to where there were so many other powerful rascals-the halls of Olympus. So much for fiction, and those never-to-be-trusted poets. Here is the truth.

Nessus was a ridiculous old dandy, with a juvenile wig and reprobate principles. He courted Hercules' "lady," and so flattered her that she became fonder than ever of fashionable garments, and even accepted a shawl from the centaur, who had ordered it in the name of the husband, and left him to pay for it. Hercules forgot his vexation in the beaux yeux of Iole; and remembering how the "old beast," as he used to call the centaur, had contrived to sun himself in Dejanira's eyes, he adopted the fashion of Nessus;

and, lightly as nymphs were dressed in the days of Iole, he ran up a right royal bill at the milliner's, and no more thought of what he should have to pay than the Duke of York, when ordering cashmeres for Anna Maria Clarke. The fall of the year however came, and therewith the "little account," with an intimation that speedy settlement would oblige. Hercules, hero as he was, felt his heart fail him as he looked at "the tottle of the whole," and he fell into such extravagances that, being hunted to death by bailiffs, and his honesty as small as that of the proprietor of an ultrapietist paper who cheats his editor, he took the benefit of the act, and retired to the country, where he kept a shabby chariot, drawn by only two mangy leopards, and ultimately died, like other heroes, bewailing his amiable weaknesses.

But let us go further back than mythology, in order to examine the origin of dress.

It may be said (and I hope without profanity) that sewing came in with sin, or rather, it was one of the first consequences of the first crime. Perhaps, for this reason, has a certain degree of contempt been inherited by the professors of the art. The trade of a tailor is not honoured with mention in any part of the Scriptures. Gardening was the early occupation, and hence horticulture is accounted refined. Tubal Cain was the first worker in iron; and from his time down to a very late period, the employment which required much exercise of muscular strength had the precedence of mere sedentary callings. The French, indeed, as becomes a nation which prides itself as being the most particular touching the external dressing of a man, has always confessed to a sort of tender regard for the tailor. The vocation against which Gallic wits direct their light-winged shafts, is that of the grocer. The épicier with them is a man whose soul does not rise above lait de poule and cotton nightcaps. He is generally the coward in farces, while heroism is not made separable from the melancholy wielders of the needle.

In France, however, we may still trace a remnant of the time

when the highest honour was awarded to the pliers of the heaviest tools, or the workmen whose vocation had a spice of peril in it. Thus the farrier smith, in France still enjoys a courtesy rank which places him on a nominal equality with the tried commanders of valiant hosts; and if Soult was Marshal of France, so every Gallic farrier is "maréchal ferrant”—the marshal of the workers in iron.

As weavers and fullers are noticed in Holy Writ, while the tailor is passed over in silence, it is probable that he had no distinct status among the Jews, and that, during a long period at least, every man was his own costumier. In other countries the tailor and the physician were both slaves, and probably the first was as little or less of a bungler than the second; for the servus vestiarius could often improve the outer man, when the servus medicus could not do as much for the inner one.

Under the old dispensation, sewing, as I have said, followed sin; and he who forged a bill-hook or a brand was in higher esteem than he who lived by the exercise of the needle. Under a later dispensation we find examples of this order of precedency being reversed. Lydia of Thyatira, was among the first who joined Paul in prayer, by the river-side at Philippi. Her office was to make up into garments the purple cloth for which Lydia itself was famous. With this proselyte Paul dwelt, and on her he left a blessing. It was not so with a certain strong handicraftsWhen Paul was once at the point of death he bethought him of an old vicious adversary, and said, "Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil; the Lord reward him according to his works!" And by this we not only see that he who taught so wisely could sometimes err against his own instructions, but we may even make this strange circumstance profitable to us by viewing in it the proof that even the nearest to heaven are not entirely free from the stains of earth; and that the spirit truly worthy of immortality has never yet been found in aught that was mortal.

man.

And this reminds me, that while every Jew learned some trade,