ly, to complete that department of
our investiture, shone with soft yet sprightly lustre--the
double-breasted bright-buttoned Buff. Five and four are nine--so that
between our carcass and our coat, it might have been classically said of
our dress--"Novies interfusa coercet." At this juncture of affairs began
the coats, which--as it is a great mistake to wear too many coats--never
exceeded six. The first used generally to be a pretty old coat that had
lived to moralise over the mutability of human
affairs--thread-bare--napless--and what ignorant people might have
called shabby-genteel. It was followed by a plain, sensible, honest,
unpretending, commonplace, everyday sort of a coat--and not, perhaps, of
the very best merino. Over it was drawn, with some little difficulty,
what had, in its prime of life, attracted universal admiration in
Princes Street, as a blue surtout. Then came your regular olive-coloured
great-coat--not braided and embroidered _a la militaire_--for we scorned
to sham travelling-captain--but _simplex munditiis_, plain in its
neatness; not wanting then was your shag-hued wraprascal, betokening
that its wearer was up to snuff--and to close this strange eventful
history, the seven-caped Dreadnought, that loved to dally with the
sleets and snows--held in calm contempt Boreas, Notus, Auster, Eurus,
and "the rest"--and drove baffled Winter howling behind the Pole.

The same principle of accumulation was made applicable to the neck. No
stock. Neckcloth above neckcloth--beginning with singles--and then
getting into the full uncut squares--the amount of the whole being
somewhere about a dozen: The concluding neckcloth worn cravat-fashion,
and flowing down the breast in a cascade, like that of an
attorney-general. Round our cheek and ear, leaving the lips at liberty
to breathe and imbibe, was wreathed, in undying remembrance of the
bravest of the brave, a Jem Belcher Fogle--and beneath the
cravat-cascade a comforter netted by the fair hands of her who had
kissed us at our departure, and was sighing for our return. One hat we
always found sufficient--and that a black beaver--for a lily castor
suits not the knowledge-box of a friend to "a limited constitutional and
hereditary monarchy."

As to our lower extremities--One pair only of roomy shoes--one pair of
stockings of the finest lamb's-wool--another of common close worsted,
knit by the hand of a Lancashire witch--thirdly, Shetland hose. All
three pair reaching