THE PHILOSOPHY OF FASHION.

Ir will, perchance, set some of my readers in a puzzle to discover what connexion can exist between fashion and philosophy, especially those who are apt to confound terms, and imagine that philosophy can only be applied in the vulgar sense. That so profound a word should be used to designate any of the follies of society, may appear a little anomalous. Most have heard of the fashionable philosophy of modern times, which, after all, is a complete misnomer, if philosophy be to be used but in one sense. Carp not, gentlemen, at terms; two and two do not always make four, in spite of Cocker-at least, if political economists know any thing at all, and many a seeming contradiction may be resolved into a consistent whole. "Old improbabilities," says a late writer, "are become modern probabilities," and the philosophy of fashion may be comprehended in an analysis of the prominent characteristics of a numerous sect of the community :-marry! proceed we then analytically.

To catch"the Cynthia of the minute,"-to depict the ever-shifting Proteus universally worshipped by the most ardent of votaries, to define with fidelity its multiform transmutations, and the flickering hues that sparkle around the idol, coming and going like the ebb and flow of the ocean, would be a vain task for pen and pencil united. Some painters complete a picture by only delineating the striking parts in a bold manner, and flinging into undefined shadow those to which their art is unequal-thus by bold and prominent outlines the original is easily recognised. This must be our stratagem, we must hit off a sketchy draught, and leave the filling up to imagination, that best of finishers. Custom, then, is styled "the law of fools," and fashion may be truly denominated their religion. Custom must approve of fashion, in the same way as my Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench tells the world that the law must approve of the religion of the state. Nothing but what is so approved can be tolerated,-and as unlucky dissenters in opinion, from what statutes make religion, are not allowed to propagate their opinions, fashion, unless tolerated by custom, is put beyond the pale of adoption, made liable to pains and penalties, and finally driven into obscurity. Thus the heretical attempts made by presumptuous individuals of the supreme bon ton to launch a mode have been many; but in spite of every effort, if custom have withheld her patronage, it has perished in neglect. I recollect when Lady Arcot, just arrived from India, with all the notoriety of wealth and the sanguine hope of a fashionable of the first water, endeavoured to introduce palanquins for visiting or shopping in a London summer, by no means a bad scheme; many stood and admired her equipage, but the thing would not take. On the other hand, a noble lord, a few years ago, cut off the skirts of his coat, and, outré as he appeared, the fashion was universally adopted; the rage for shorn garments spread like a pestilence, and did not cease until another fashion, perhaps equally extravagant, "pushed it from its stool." Fashion has numerous attendants in her temple

-as

messengers too that go up and down the whole range of her empire with unwearying activity, and search out novelties, to satisfy her insatiable demands. Her extremest votaries are nearly always in the ranks of weak intellect, while every fool of a particular class in life is a certain devotee. How degrading is this devotion of mankind to a reasonless phantom; yet how mysterious in its origin! Youth with its generous sympathies catches the contagion, and the aged, in spite of experience, are as much wedded to it as the young. A great portion of the cold heartlessness of the many, is owing to the practice of duplicity and insincerity instilled by fashionable manners, arising from the constant efforts of men to appear what they are not, and to hide under a glozing courtesy envy, hatred, "and all uncharitableness." An air of fashion borne by many honourable individuals, it must be granted, sets off the innate good principles they possess; such would scout fashion if she made them hypocrites--they are what they seem, they mean all they say they may be trusted. But how few is the number of such as confer honour upon fashion, not fashion upon them! Yet all must more or less adopt a portion of it to pass current in the world with,in taking our necessary food we must ever swallow some portion of a deleterious poison. The wise must therefore follow fashion at a sober distance, while its intoxicated disciples press close on its heels, and try to hug themselves in its harlequin garments. There is no object on earth so vapidly disagreeable as your superlative man of fashion, encounter him under any circumstances. I do not mean the well-bred gentleman, but him of the bastard breed, who is the reverse in character-yet is he at the acme of exalted life. Meet him in the drawingroom or at the dinner-table, in the theatre or the street, he is a nuisance, an object for the contempt rather than the detestation of the wise. He is proud; but his is not the pride of principle or the weakness of high birth, which latter, considering the fallibility of human nature, may sometimes be excused, when he who shews it has better qualities to weigh it down. It is the inflation of self-consequence, from the imaginary possession of every thing superior to other men. as mean in solicitation, as he is insolent in triumph. Does he make a request of you, he makes it like a " fawning greyhound," with a "deal of candied courtesy."-You instantly think with the peer in addressing Sir Plume, that it is a pity—

"Who speaks so well should ever speak in vain!"

He is

The honey of Nestor without the wisdom hangs on his lips. He is insinuatingly persuasive: talks of "immense obligations" and "grateful feelings," while he is circumventing you, as he imagines, by his stratagems of speech, or a downright lie or two, if nothing else will serve his turn; all which you easily see through, but must not quarrel with for fear of the ultima ratio with a man of honour! The next day at Lady W.'s he will not recognise you. Vanity is his reigning passion; whoever will administer to this may command him wholly; he wishes all to look at his appliances and appendages, to trumpet their cost and magnificence, and to acknowledge that their owner must be the noblest of created bipeds. This is known, and obtains him friends, who feed themselves and his folly at the same time. Mothers, too, with marriageable daughters, plot to make him a son-in-law, and are eager to sell off

their kine, where, while they live in a state little above prostitution, except indeed in name, they satisfy their avaricious views for their young stock. One fashionable apes another, even in his defects. I have heard a healthy brawny fellow, habited in the pink of the mode, declare his envy of a hobbling beau, equally high dressed, because he bore emaciated legs and a mealy visage, expressive of ill health from long dissipation, which threw over his gait a modish languor, exactly squaring with certain bizarre ideas of the most exquisite of fashion's masterpieces. Life, with the man of fashion, evaporates in essences and perfumes. Knowledge, except its outscourings, is the butt of all such, and reason has no place in their vocabulary. Natural impulses must be limited, and never transgress set forms and customary ordinances. Honesty, virtue, or talent, are of no avail in a circle of fashion, if the air of the ton be wanting-it is well they have better supporters. Wit might be voted an agreeable accomplishment in a man of fashion from its rarity-we have no George Selwyns now; but in one whom Stultz or Weston had not clothed it would be declared a bore. The mental acquirements of the man of fashion are comprised in the smaller chitchat of the day; politics are above him, even if drawn from the skimmilk of some obscure newspaper-the Koran of fashion's disciples. He is learned in the racing-calendar, knows the state of the betting at Tattersal's; can speak the names of the figurantes at the Opera; makes a good leg; plays whist, only not as well as some maiden ladies; dances a quadrille; knows the slang of the club-rooms; dices with legitimate oaths; frequents the Fives Court for the improvement of his vocabulary; knows a dozen kept women of the town, and can drive a chariot tolerably. His acquirements are all copied; he has nothing original, though he may go farther than others in the beaten track. His tailors are his most benefited auditors, and they as usual scantily en poche. Rough and coarse on the coach-box, when in the drawing-room he is so delicately essenced, he looks as if he might be "brained with his lady's fan"-si il a en. Yet he leads a certain number of admirers even there, like the ignis fatuus of a marsh, into the maze of his own stagnation. Safe under the shelter of fashion's wing, he struts the favourite of the softer sex and the envy of his own-the B-1 of his circle.

Walk the fashionable streets at four o'clock in the day, and mark the equipages that rattle along. One stops: the footman descends and thunders at a door-fashion is at work in another form. A morning call is to be made. The visitant mounts to the drawing-room floor; she enters, makes obeisance, and seats herself. Five minutes interchange of the veriest common-place succeeds, and the morning call is concluded. Strong professions of friendship and regard are made while the door of the room is opening, and reiterated invitations to visit, all which are mere moonshine-the parties hate each other! The chariot drives off; the same farce is repeated ten houses farther down the street. The visitor is disappointed. The visited does not choose to be at home, though she really is; a card is left, and the visitor hies to a third mansion, enters the room, and a conversation ensues, which is ever nearly in the same strain, and has the convenience of being easily comprehensible-mere parrot's-talk phrases of rote, full of friendly professions. The visitor again retires, and as the door of the room shuts upon her, Lady V. has just time to tell her "humble

companion," that Mrs. is a frump, an odious woman-when a second knock announces a new call; the same scene is acted, and, mayhap, the new comer "is welcomed as the former"-by as friendly professions and as hollow a reality. Thus the butterflies of fashion, like monarchs, have few real friends, though they have the consolation left of reflecting, that they serve each other alike—à fourbe, fourbe et demi, and that all are equally destitute of what none can personify in good earnest. How heart-sickening is all this! how doubly valuable does it make sincerity and real friendship! How "stale, flat, and unprofitable" are these usages to him who reflects on the nobler destinies of man-of what he may be, of what he ought to be! of what he has been! How little, after all, of what is worthy the intellectual man prevails even in this refined age! Let those who are smitten with the frippery and glitter of the haute monde peep behind the thin veil drawn before its deformities, and then desire to be of it with "what appetite they may." Some urge in its defence that all these matters are well understood in modern intercourse; and that, therefore, there is no insincerity. But all cannot be comprehended, or who would thanklessly toil in a sickly pursuit, and "make pale their cheeks" at the midnight orgies of fashion, conscious of its folly? The truth is, that a few to whom it has become necessary from custom, at length see its emptiness; but, having been caught in its orbit, they are retained there in spite of themselves. Who that loved social intercourse and refined conversation, such as the French are famous for, but which our fashionables know little about, could enjoy an English rout?-they might go, but they would quit it in disgust. Yet there Fashion revels: "joyless and unendeared," it is true; but not the less glittering her sphere on that account to her disciples-not the less attractive to those whose notion of the highest human pleasure is to

exhibit

their gaily gilded trim

Quick glancing to the sun.

For

The rout is the carnival of fashionable life, and is adapted to the meanest capacity in its ceremonies. It is a well-dressed mob, with much of a mob's practice in elbowing, shuffling, cramming, whispering, and idle confabulation. Yet how important is a rout! weeks the house of the receiver is in a course of preparation for it. Carpenters, painters, confectioners, chandlers, upholsterers, and heaven knows who, are placed in requisition. The newspapers are solicited to emblazon the fame of the donor, and raise the expectation of the guests to the loftiest pitch of excitement-" On Thursday next the Hon. Mrs. Ogle will entertain a large party of the first rank and distinction at her house in Sackville-street; all the beauty and fashion of the metropolis are invited." Those roguish newspapers, how they deal in hyperbole!-all!-all the beauty and fashion of a city containing a million of souls is to be huddled into three rooms, the largest only forty feet by eighteen, the others scarcely half the size! The important day arrives;-at ten at night Mrs. Ogle's house resembles Coventgarden Theatre at a royal bespeak. The Duke of Dunderhead's carriage-pole fractures Lady Betty Leatherhead's coach-pannel-the footmen curse each other most unchristianly-link boys move about

like banditti in the mud and smoke, with the light of their torches reflected on their haggard visages, in breechless expectation of a penny fee-ladies, at other times all timidity, dash in their carriages amid the hubbub, undismayed at the uproar, and with tumultuous bosoms hasten to the crowded scene, from the windows of which brilliant lights are displayed and sounds of music descend-within all is confusion, uproar, delightful squeezing,' as the ladies have it, crowd, suffocation. Strangers are introduced to the lady of the mansion, who have not elbow-room to bow to her-the guests, unknown to each other, stare around, in hope of meeting an acquaintance to break the tedium of their peopled solitude-many a sweet damsel's "silver-tinselled feet" are rudely crushed by intruding toes, and many a lovely countenance obscured by the intervention of an unwieldy peeress's huge bulk, or the still more appalling convexities of Dutch nabobess glittering with Eastern plunder. A circulation of guests is kept up: some, after remaining a half-hour, go away to a second display of the same kind at Lady Twirlabout's or Lord Doodle's; and others arrive who have already been both at her ladyship's and his lordship's parties. At length not one half remain, and a confined corner may be found about one in the morning to commence quadrilling-ennuyants still retire, and the number of "twinkling feet" increases. The dance is kept alive until the fifth or sixth hour, though it did not commence until after three hours' standing, jostling, and fatigue, had well nigh exhausted the powers of the more tender portion of the visitants. About six o'clock the remnant of company retire from sultry rooms to their cold carriages and the morning air, beauty's eternal foe, to doze on their feverish couches till an hour or two after the meridian of day. This is a rout, the maximum of enjoyment!-the elysium of the gaythe revel of fashion! Haply, for the first time, some lovely girl of eighteen from the healthful country-some "cynosure of neighbouring eyes" at her father's mansion, has visited London, and in the slang term "come out" at this very entertainment-fresh in colour as the morning rose, having eyes that lighten with mild and modest radiance, a form like Psyche's, all animation, tempered by refined manners-a heart and disposition sincere, confiding, truth itself-hither she has come, to be initiated into a way of life that must reverse all her better habitudes. From this evening the languor of fashionable existence, slowly at first, but not the less sure, will begin to steal over her frame. Her vermeil beauty of cheek will fade into pallor, her limbs will lose their firmness and become flaccid, her simplicity and candour of manners will be exchanged for coquetry and art, every unsophisticated charm will be no more. In a season or two she will be the pale, artificial, languid victim of town dissipation. If the heat of apartments not a tenth part large enough for the company that enters them to breathe freely in, the want of accustomed sleep, the warmth of a London bed in certain seasons of the year, the rising not with the lark but the owl, wear not out life itself, still the countenance, it will too soon be said, is charming now no more; the bloom is filed, The lilies languid, and the roses dead.

Numerous are the victims offered upon the altar of Fashion-the Moloch of Britain, the devourer of her children. Consumption, in the Metro