ptation to different statures and sizes. They have much comfort and
convenience to recommend them, and it would be a great point gained if
they were altogether adopted, and the frock-coat, which still asserts a
claim to be considered more correct, were quietly given up.

It may be matter only of custom and association, or it may also depend
upon some deeper considerations, but the result of much observation is,
that with the ordinary out-of-door costume of the present day, as worn
in cities, nothing goes so well as the black hat. There is an ugliness
and a stiffness about it which is congruous with the ugliness and
stiffness of every thing else. Its very height and straight sides tend
to carry the eye upwards, in conformity with the indication of the
principal lines in the lower part of the dress. It is like a steeple
upon a Gothic tower, and repeats the perpendicular tendencies of what is
below it, instead of contradicting them by the introduction of a
horizontal element. Certainly, no kind of cap goes well with it: the
traveller who has not unpacked his hat, and continues to wear in the
streets what served him on the road, or the Turk, European in all but
his red fez, cut but a sorry and mongrel figure among the shining
beavers around them, which retain their place as necessary evils under
the existing order of things.

Once, however, escape from the town, and see how every one gets rid of
his regular coat, and of his chimney-pot. The man of business in his
rural retreat, the lawyer in vacation, the lounger at the sea-side, have
all discarded them. Emancipation from the coat and hat is synonymous
with leisure, enjoyment, and freedom from the formal trammels of public
and civic life. The most staid and reverend personages may now be seen
disporting themselves in divers jackets, and in that Wide-awake which a
few years since was confined to the sportsman or his slang imitator.
Surely this universal consent of mankind must be accepted as an omen of
the future; and when the looser and more sensible garments now worn in
the country, shall be established as the usual dress of the towns also,
they will be accompanied by the soft and wide-leaved hat of felt, which
already goes along with them wherever they are tolerated.

From the Athenaeum.

LIFE IN PERSIA, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Prince Alexis Soltykoff, a Russian, who published in Paris last year his
_Travels in India_, has just given to the w