heard,--a philosopher, in
short, whom it took centuries to learn, centuries to unlearn, and is
now going to take a generation or more to learn over again. Regular
dandy, he was. So was Marcus Antonius: and though he lost his game, he
played for big stakes, and it wasn't his dandyism that spoiled his
chance. Petrarca was not to be despised as a scholar or a poet, but he
was one of the same sort. So was Sir Humphrey Davy; so was Lord
Palmerston, formerly, if I am not forgetful. Yes,--a dandy is good for
something as such; and dandies such as I was just speaking of have
rocked this planet like a cradle,--aye, and left it swinging to this
day.--Still, if I were you, I wouldn't go to the tailor's, on the
strength of these remarks, and run up a long bill which will render
pockets a superfluity in your next suit. _Elegans "nascitur, non
fit._" A man is born a dandy, as he is born a poet. There are heads
that can't wear hats; there are necks that can't fit cravats; there
are jaws that can't fill out collars--(Willis touched this last point
in one of his earlier ambrotypes, if I remember rightly); there are
_tournures_ nothing can humanize, and movements nothing can subdue to
the gracious suavity or elegant languor or stately serenity which
belong to different styles of dandyism.

We are forming an aristocracy, as you may observe, in this
country,--not a _gratia-Dei_, nor a _jure-divino_ one,--but a
_de-facto_ upper stratum of being, which floats over the turbid waves
of common life as the iridescent film you may have seen spreading over
the water about our wharves,--very splendid, though its origin may
have been tar, tallow, train-oil, or other such unctuous commodities.
I say, then, we are forming an aristocracy; and, transitory as its
individual life often is, it maintains itself tolerably, as a whole.
Of course, money is its corner-stone. But now observe this. Money kept
for two or three generations transforms a race,--I don't mean merely
in manners and hereditary culture, but in blood and bone. Money buys
air and sunshine, in which children grow up more kindly, of course,
than in close, back streets; it buys country-places to give them happy
and healthy summers, good nursing, good doctoring, and the best cuts
of beef and mutton. When the spring-chickens come to market----I beg
your pardon,--that is not what I was going to speak of. As the young
females of each successive season come on, the finest specimens among
them, oth