ally set down as 'next to
godliness,' a proximity with which the Beau was quite satisfied, for he
never attempted to pass on to that next stage. Poor fool, he might rub
every particle of moisture off the skin of his body--he might be clean
as a kitten--but he could not and did not purify his mind with all this
friction; and the man who would have fainted to see a black speck upon
his shirt, was not at all shocked at the indecent conversation in which
he and his companions occasionally indulged.

The body cleansed, the face had next to be brought up as near perfection
as nature would allow. With a small looking-glass in one hand, and
tweezers in the other, he carefully removed the tiniest hairs that he
could discover on his cheeks or chin, enduring the pain like a martyr.

Then came the shirt, which was in his palmy days changed three times a
day, and then in due course the great business of the cravat. Captain
Jesse's minute account of the process of tying this can surely be relied
on, and presents one of the most ludicrous pictures of folly and vanity
that can be imagined. Had Brummell never lived, and a novelist or
play-writer described the toilet which Captain Jesse affirms to have
been his daily achievement, he would have had the critics about him with
the now common phrase--'This book is a tissue, not only of
improbabilities, but of actual impossibilities.' The collar, then, was
so large, that in its natural condition it rose high above the wearer's
head, and some ingenuity was required to reduce it by delicate folds to
exactly that height which the Beau judged to be correct. Then came the
all-majestic white neck-tie, a foot in breadth. It is not to be supposed
that Brummell had the neck of a swan or a camel--far from it. The worthy
fool had now to undergo, with admirable patience, the mysterious process
known to our papas as 'creasing down.' The head was thrown back, as if
ready for a dentist; the stiff white tie applied to the throat, and
gradually wrinkled into half its actual breadth by the slow downward
movement of the chin. When all was done, we can imagine that comfort was
sacrificed to elegance, as it was then considered, and that the sudden
appearance of Venus herself could not have induced the deluded
individual to turn his head in a hurry.

It is scarcely profitable to follow this lesser deity into all the
details of his self-adornment. It must suffice to say that he affected
an extreme neatness and si