, which, being white and starched, form a
pleasing contrast with that portion of the original _chemise_, vainly
attempted to be concealed behind the folds of a three-and-six-penny
stock. Wednesdays and Fridays you cannot mistake; your friend is then at
the dirtiest, and his beard at the longest, anticipating the half-weekly
wash and shave: on quarter-day, when he gets his salary, he goes to a
sixpenny barber and has his hair cut.

A gentleman, on the contrary, in addition to his other noble
inutilities, is useless as an almanac. He is never half shaven nor half
shorn: you never can tell when he has had his hair cut, nor has he his
clean-shirt days, and his days of foul linen. He is not merely outwardly
_propre_, but asperges his cuticle daily with "oriental scrupulosity:"
he is always and ever, in person, manner, dress, and deportment, the
same, and has never been other than he now appears.

You will say, perhaps, this is all very fine; but give me the money the
man of fashion has got, and I will be as much a man of fashion as he: I
will wear my clothes with the same ease, and be as free, unembarrassed,
_degage_, as the veriest Bond Street lounger of them all. Friend, thou
mayest say so, or even think so, but I defy thee: snobbery, like murder,
will out; and, if you do not happen to be a gentleman born, we tell you
plainly you will never, by dint of expense in dress, succeed in "topping
the part."

We have been for many years deeply engaged in a philosophical enquiry
into the origin of the peculiar attributes characteristic of the man of
fashion. A work of such importance, however, we cannot think of giving
to the world, except in the appropriate envelope of a ponderous quarto:
just now, by way of whetting the appetite of expectation, we shall
merely observe, that, after much pondering, we have at last discovered
the secret of his wearing his garments "with a difference," or, more
properly, with an indifference, unattainable by others of the human
species. You will conjecture, haply, that it is because he and his
father before him have been from childhood accustomed to pay attention
to dress, and that habit has given them that air which the occasional
dresser can never hope to attain: or that, having the best _artistes_,
seconded by that beautiful division of labour of which we have spoken
heretofore, he can attain an evenness of costume, an undeviating
propriety of toggery--not at all: the whole secret consists in _n