horse vocabulary, who has consumed his
valuable time (and mine) freely, in developing an opinion of a
brother-minister's discourse which would have been abundantly
characterized by a peach-down-lipped sophomore in the one
word--_slow_. Let us discriminate, and be shy of absolute
proscription. I am omniverbivorous by nature and training. Passing by
such words as are poisonous, I can swallow most others, and chew such
as I cannot swallow.

Dandies are not good for much, but they are good for something. They
invent or keep in circulation those conversational blank checks or
counters just spoken of, which intellectual capitalists may sometimes
find it worth their while to borrow of them. They are useful, too, in
keeping up the standard of dress, which, but for them, would
deteriorate, and become, what some old fools would have it, a matter
of convenience, and not of taste and art. Yes, I like dandies well
enough,--on one condition.

----What is that, Sir?--said the divinity-student.

----That they have pluck. I find that lies at the bottom of all true
dandyism. A little boy dressed up very fine, who puts his finger in
his mouth and takes to crying, if other boys make fun of him, looks
very silly. But if he turns red in the face and knotty in the fists,
and makes an example of the biggest of his assailants, throwing off
his fine Leghorn and his thickly-buttoned jacket, if necessary, to
consummate the act of justice, his small toggery takes on the
splendors of the crested helmet that frightened Astyanax. You remember
that the Duke said his dandy officers were his best officers. The
"Sunday blood," the super-superb sartorial equestrian of our annual
Fast-day, is not imposing or dangerous. But such fellows as Brummel
and D'Orsay and Byron are not to be snubbed quite so easily. Look out
for "la main de fer sous le gant de velours" (which I printed in
English the other day without quotation-marks, thinking whether any
_scarabaeus criticus_ would add this to his globe and roll in glory
with it into the newspapers,--which he didn't do it, in the charming
pleonasm of the London language, and therefore I claim the sole merit
of exposing the same). A good many powerful and dangerous people have
had a decided dash of dandyism about them. There was Alcibiades, the
"curled son of Clinias," an accomplished young man, but what would be
called a "swell" in these days. There was Aristoteles, a very
distinguished writer, of whom you have