name, and the wrapper, the paletot's cousin, a regular commercial
gent--such is the genealogy of that other family of garments which we
cherish as our household gods. But, as we hinted above, we can hunt up the
descent of some of these articles to times far removed--(the mantle, we
know, came to us from the Romans)--we allude to the upper coat, or
wrapper; for we find that a two-sleeved cloak, with enormously long
sleeves, by the way, and a most surprisingly scanty allowance of body, was
worn by the dandies in the days of the rival Roses; and, to go still
further back, we have seen a contemporary portrait of that glorious old
fellow Chaucer, clad in a grey wrapper that might have been made in St
James's Street, A.D. 1845. If the paletot and the wrapper wish to prove
any claims to gentle birth, they cannot do better than refer their wearers
to the father of English poets. He was a man of first-rate taste, you may
depend upon it.

With all these changes--and we do not intend to blacken our fathers'
memories for having made them--what have we arrived at in this point of
dress? What are the conveniences of our present garments? in what are they
useful? in what are they beautiful? in what do they need to be improved?
To begin at the top of the tree--the modern _habit-de-cour_: coat for coat
of the dress kind, (military coats are, for the present, out of the
question,) this is the most useful, and the most becoming, of any now
worn. People are inclined to ridicule this coat, not so much on its own
account as for the foolish trappings with which it is commonly
accompanied; but we assert that, in its form, its dimensions, and in its
suitableness of purpose, it is far superior to what is vulgarly called a
dress-coat. The curve of the fronts, and the still somewhat ample sweep of
the skirt, the plainness of the collar, and the absence of all pretension
in its composition--above all, the total absence of any useless,
unmeaning ornament, such as sham pocket-flaps, &c.--all these qualities
give it a claim to superiority. If the opinions of the extremes of mankind
be sometimes right, as opposed to those of the majority, then the form of
that coat, which is worn alike by the courtier and the Quaker, must have
some large share of innate merit.

Nothing of this kind can be said of the common short, or dress coat. This
most silly and unmeaning habiliment possesses neither dignity nor beauty
to entitle it to public favour. It is useless o