one grand class
of coats--we will specify which by and by--the public seem to have arrived
at a tolerably reasonable result. There certainly are some men, many men
indeed, in the world who may be said to be sensibly dressed. 'Tis a
phenomenon when you come to think about it; but the fluctuations of taste
in this matter have, for the time being, arrived at a normal state. After
the variations of centuries, the vagaries of taste in male attire, (which
may be measured, for their ups and downs, by curves, with quite as much
reason as the rise and fall in prices of corn, and various other things
that the members of statistical societies delight in portraying)--these
variations, in their endless wrigglings and windings, have come back in
more cases than one to their points of departure, and there form _nodi_,
points of reflection, contrary flexure, &c. At all these points the curve
of taste may be assumed to be stationary. Pray, excuse us, good reader,
for being scientific--do not call it obscure--on so luminous a point. But
is not the mystery of tailoring become a science? Is not the ninth part of
a man now called an _artiste_? Have we not regular treatises published,
with no end of diagrams, on the art of self-measurement? Just look at the
advertisements at the back of your Sunday newspaper, or in the fly-leaves
of your last Maga. And, after all, where is the harm? "The noblest study
of mankind is man!" However, it is a learned point, on which a world of
talk may be got up; so we will waive it for the moment, to be resumed in
the due course of our ruminations.

Now, there is no man in his sober senses who will not admit that a
European, but especially a Briton, requires one or more coats to protect
him from the varying influences of climate. Whether we suppose him muffled
up in the skins of the _urus_ and the wolf of the old Hercynian forest, or
sporting in the soft fabrics woven from the fleeces of Spain and Saxony,
no one but a sheer madman, in any parallel north of the 40th, ever thought
of dispensing altogether with a stout upper garment. It has been a
necessary thing, rammed into every man's head by Jack Frost, Dan Sol, and
other atmospheric genii, that he should provide himself with suitable
upper toggery; and hence we infer that public and private attention has
been directed as much to coats and cloaks as to any other two things that
can be mentioned, next after meat and drink. No wonder, then, that men
have differed