He keeps his evening coat, then, for dinners. And if this friendly address to all the mothers who read this miscellany may somewhat be acted upon by them; if heads of families, instead of spending hundreds upon chalking floors, and Gunter, and cold suppers, and Weippert's band, will determine upon giving a series of plain, neat, nice dinners, of not too many courses, but well cooked, of not too many wines, but good of their sort, and according to the giver's degree, they will see that the young men will come to them fast enough; that they will marry their daughters quite as fast, without injuring their health, and that they will make a saving at the year's end. I say that young men, young women, and heads of families, should bless me for pointing out this obvious plan to them, so natural, so hearty, so hospitable, so different to the present artificial mode.

A grand ball in a palace is splendid, generous, and noble,-a sort of procession in which people may figure properly. A family dance is a pretty and pleasant amusement; and (especially after dinner) it does the philosopher's heart good to look upon merry young people who know each other, and are happy, natural, and familiar. But a Baker Street hop is a base invention, and as such let it be denounced and avoided.

A dressing-gown has great merits, certainly, but it is dangerous. A man who wears it of mornings generally takes the liberty of going without a neckcloth, or of not shaving, and is no better than a driveller. Sometimes, to be sure, it is necessary, in self-defence, not to shave, as a precaution against yourself that is to say; and I know no better means of ensuring a man's remaining at home than neglecting the use of the lather and razor for a week, and encouraging a crop of bristles. When I wrote my tragedy, I shaved off for the last two acts my left eyebrow, and never stirred out of doors until it had grown to be a great deal thicker than its right-hand neighbour. But this was an extreme precaution, and unless a man has very strong reasons indeed for stopping at home, and a very violent propensity to gadding, his best plan is to shave every morning neatly, to put on his regular

coat, and go regularly to work, and to avoid a dressing-gown as the father of all evil. Painters are the only persons who can decently appear in dressing-gowns; but these

are

none of your easy morninggowns, they are commonly of splendid stuff, and put on by the artist in order to render himself remarkable and splendid in the eyes of his sitter. Your loose-wadded German schlafrock, imported of late years into our country, is the laziest, filthiest invention; and I always augur as ill of a man whom I see appearing at breakfast in one, as of a woman who comes down-stairs in curl-papers.

By the way, in the third act of Macbeth, Mr. Macready makes his appearance in the court-yard of Glamis Castle in an affair of brocade that has always struck me as absurd and un-Macbethlike. Mac in a dressing-gown (I mean 'Beth, not 'Ready),-Mac in list slippers,-Mac in a cotton nightcap, with a tassel bobbing up and down,-I say the thought is unworthy, and am sure the worthy thane, would have come out, if suddenly called from bed, by any circumstance however painful, in a good stout jacket. It is a more manly, simple, and majestic wear than the lazy dressing-gown; it more becomes a man of Macbeth's mountainous habits; it leaves his legs quite free, to run whithersoever he pleases, whether to the stables, to look at the animals,-to the farm, to see the pig that has been slaughtered that morning,-to the garden, to examine whether that scoundrel of a John Hoskins has dug up the potatobed, to the nursery, to have a romp with the little Macbeths that are spluttering and quarrelling over their porridge, or whither you will. A man in a jacket is fit company for any body; there is no shame about it as about being seen in a changed coat; it is simple, steady, and straightforward. It is, as I have stated, all over pockets, which contain every thing you want; in one, your buttons, hammer, small nails, thread, twine, and cloth-strips for the trees on the south wall; in another, your dog-whip and whistle, your knife, cigar-case, gingerbread for the children, paper of Epsom salts for John Hoskins's mother, who is mortal bad, -and so on: there is no end to the

pockets, and to the things you put in them. Walk about in your jacket, and meet what person you will, you assume at once an independent air; and, thrusting your hands into the receptacle that flaps over each hip, look the visitor in the face, and talk to the ladies on a footing of perfect equality. Whereas, look at the sneaking way in which a man caught in a dressing-gown, in loose bagging trousers most likely (for the man who has a dressing-gown, has, two to one, no braces), and in shuffling slippers, see how he whisks his dressinggown over his legs, and looks ashamed and uneasy. His lanky hair hangs over his blowsy, fat, shining, unhealthy face; his bristly, dumplingshaped double chin peers over a flaccid shirt colour; the sleeves of his gown are in rags, and you see underneath a pair of black wristbands, and the rim of a dingy flannel waistcoat.

A man who is not strictly neat in his person is not an honest man. I shall not enter into this very ticklish subject of personal purification and neatness, because this Essay will be read by hundreds of thousands of ladies as well as men; and for the former I would wish to provide nothing but pleasure. Men may listen to stern truths; but for ladies one should only speak verities that are sparkling, rosy, brisk, and agreeable. A man who wears a dressing-gown is not neat in his person; his moral character takes invariably some of the slaternliness and looseness of his costume; he becomes enervated, lazy, incapable of great actions. A man IN A JACKET is a man. All great men wore jackets. Walter Scott wore a jacket, as every body knows; Byron wore a jacket (not that I count a man who turns down his collars for much); I have a picture of Napoleon in a jacket, at St. Helena; Thomas Carlyle wears a jacket; Lord John Russell always mounts a jacket on arriving at the Colonial Office; and if I have a single fault to find with that popular writer, the author of never mind what, you know his name as well as I-it is that he is in the habit of composing his works in a large, flowered damask dressing-gown, and morocco slippers; whereas, in a jacket he would write

off something, not so flowery, if

you please, but of honest texture,something not so long, but terse, modest, and comfortable,-no great, long, strealing tails of periods,—no staring peonies and hollyhocks of illustrations,-no flaring cords and tassels of episodes,-no great, dirty, wadded sleeves of sentiment, ragged at the elbows and cuffs, and mopping up every thing that comes in their way-cigar-ashes, ink, candle-wax, cold brandy-and-water, coffee, or whatever aids to the brain he may employ as a literary man; not to mention the quantity of tooth-powder, whisker-dye, soapsuds, and pomatum, that the same garment receives in the course of the toilets at which it assists. Let all literary men, then, get jackets. I prefer them without tails; but do not let this interfere with another man's pleasure: he may have tails if he likes, and I for one will never say him nay.

Like all things, however, jackets are subject to abuse; and the pertness and conceit of those jackets cannot be sufficiently reprehended which one sees on the backs of men at watering-places, with a telescope poking out of one pocket, and a yellow bandana flaunting from the other. Nothing is more contemptible than Tims in a jacket, with a blue bird's-eye neck - handkerchief tied sailor-fashion, puffing smoke like a steamer, with his great broad orbicular stern shining in the sun. I always long to give the wretch a smart smack upon that part where his coat-tails ought to be, and advise him to get into a more decent costume. There is an age and a figure for jackets; those who are of a certain build should not wear them in public. Witness fat officers of the dragoon-guards that one has seen bumping up and down the Steyne, at Brighton, on their great chargers, with a laced and embroidered coat, a cartridge-box, or whatever you call it, of the size of a twopennyloaf, placed on the small of their backs if their backs may be said to have a small, and two little twinkling abortions of tails pointing downwards to the enormity jolting in the saddle. Officers should be occasionally measured, and after passing a certain width, should be drafted into other regiments, or allowed-nay ordered to wear frock-coats.

The French tailors make frockcoats very well, but the people who wear them have the disgusting habit of wearing stays, than which nothing can be more unbecoming the dignity of man. Look what a waist the Apollo has, not above four inches less in the girth than the chest is. Look, ladies, at the waist of the Venus, and pray—pray do not pinch in your dear little ribs in that odious and unseemly way. In a young man, a slim waist is very well; and if he looks like the Eddystone lighthouse, it is as nature intended him to look. A man of certain age may be built like a tower, stalwart and straight. Then a man's middle may expand from the pure cylindrical to the barrel shape; well, let him be content. Nothing is so horrid as a fat man with a band; an hourglass is a most mean and ungracious figure. Daniel Lambert is ungracious, but not mean. One meets with some men who look in their frock-coats perfectly sordid, sneaking, and ungentlemanlike, who if you see them dressed for an evening have a slim, easy, almost fashionable, appearance. Set these persons down as fellows of poor spirit and milksops. Stiff white tyes and waistcoats, prim straight tails, and a gold chain, will give any man of moderate lankiness an air of factitious gentility; but if you want to understand the individual, look at him in the daytime; see him walking with his hat on. There is a great deal in the build and wearing of hats, a great deal more than at first meets the eye. I know a man who in a particular hat looked so extraordinarily like a man of property, that no tradesman on earth could refuse to give him credit. It was one of André's, and cost a guinea and a half ready money; but the person in question was frightened at the enormous charge, and afterwards purchased beavers in the city at the cost of seventeen-and-sixpence. And what was the consequence? He fell off in public estimation, and very soon after he came out in his city hat it began to be whispered abroad that he was a ruined man.

A blue coat is, after all, the best; but a gentleman of my acquaintance has made his fortune by an Oxford mixture, of all colours in the world,

with a pair of white buckskin gloves. He looks as if he had just got off his horse, and as if he had three thousand a-year in the country. There is a kind of proud humility in an Oxford mixture. Velvet collars, and all such gimcracks, had best be avoided by sober people. This paper is not written for drivelling dandies, but for honest men. There

is a great deal of philosophy and forethought in Sir Robert Peel's dress; he does not wear those white waistcoats for nothing. I say that O'Connell's costume is likewise that of a profound rhetorician, slouching and careless as it seems. Lord Melbourne's air of reckless, good-humoured, don't-care-a-damn-ativeness is not obtained without an effort. Look at the Duke as he passes along in that stern little straight frock and plaid breeches; look at him, and off with your hat! How much is there in that little grey coat of Napoleon's! A spice of clap-trap and dandyism, no doubt; but we must remember the country which he had to govern. I never see a picture of George III. in his old stout Windsor uniform without feeling a respect; or of George IV., breeches and silk stockings, a wig, a sham smile, a frogged frock coat and a fur collar, without that proper degree of reverence which such a costume should inspire. The coat is the expression of the man-wig Quadwy, &c.; and as the peach-tree throws out peachleaves, the pear-tree pear ditto, as old George appeared invested in the sober old garment of blue and red, so did young George in oiled wigs, fur collars, stays and braided surtouts, according to his nature.

Enough-enough; and may these thoughts arising in the writer's mind from the possession of a new coat, which circumstance caused him to think not only of new coats, but of old ones, and of coats neither old nor new, and not of coats merely, but of men,―may these thoughts so inspired answer the purpose for which they have been set down on paper, and which is not a silly wish to instruct mankind,- no, no; but an honest desire to pay a deserving tradesman whose confidence supplied the garment in question.

Pentonville, April 25, 1841.

"O God, who didst give to thy people blessed Bonaventure as a minister of eternal salvation, grant, we beseech thee, that we may deserve to have him as an intercessor in heaven, whom we have had a doctor of life upon earth."

Or as in the Roman Missal, published by Keating and Brown :

"O God, who didst give Blessed Bonaventure to thy people for a minister of eternal salvation, grant, we beseech thee, that he who was the instructor of our life here on earth may become our intercessor in heaven."

Here, then, we have Bonaventure recognised not merely as a saint and intercessor, but as a doctor, or teacher, or instructor of the lives of Roman Catholics. The weight and worth of this saint's instructions no Roman Catholic can dispute. He is recognised as a teacher on earth and an intercessor in heaven. If Romanists approve his teaching, we charge on them idolatry and blasphemy. If they condemn his teaching, we ask how they have canonised and beatified him; how they refer to him both in the Breviary and in the Missal as a teacher and intercessor; and, as we will shew, how they print and reprint nine editions of his work in so many years?

We pledge ourselves to fasten on the Romish Church not only the writings of Bonaventure, but practices and principles grossly idolatrous. This is a serious charge. Our indubitable proofs of her entertaining persecuting principles have long taught us that the Romish church is a sanguinary and cruel corporation of men, who have laid the mercies of Christianity and the sympathies of human kind on the altars of their god, Moloch. But now we venture to say, that we charge on the Romish

communion more horrible tenets. We pledge ourselves to prove them guilty of idolatry-guilty of giving to the Virgin Mary that worship which is due to God only. They may call it hyperdulia, and under this endeavour to escape our charge; but we will prove that they give latria by name to a cross-beam which they christen the cross, and substantially and really to the Virgin Mary.

We challenge the whole Roman Catholic Institute to repel our statement. We bid Daniel Murray, of Dublin; Daniel O'Connell, of Derrynane; and Daniel French, the lay vicar apostolic of Hammersmith and Kensington-three renowned Daniels -to disprove, or even decently excuse, the awful blasphemy and idolatry we father upon them.

The best course we can pursue will be to illustrate the principles held and propagated by the Romish church, by giving full and faithful extracts from the recognised and authentic documents on our table. We will next meet the objections which some priests, more wily than wise, have got up on the exposure of their black craft and idolatrous practices. In this country Popery is in disguise. Her wicked and designing priests aim at present to make proselytes merely; to gather home power, and wealth, and means; and from an undisputed throne hereafter, to fulminate her curses and impress her unabjured idolatry and cherished bloodthirstiness on many a pining victim. It becomes every good man solemnly and fearlessly to expose her, to tear off the mask, to warn the unwary, and to rouse and deepen a spirit of sacred resistance in the hearts of our Protestant population, which will repress the proud pretensions of an Italian priest, and crush the seeds of superstition, slavery, and shame in so venerated and venerable a land.

We begin with the Psalms; and in doing so, ask the Roman Catholic Institute if such is the devotion they are anxious to teach us and our offspring?

"Psalm 1.

Blessed is the man who loveth thy name, O Virgin Mary: thy grace shall strengthen his heart.

As a fertile spot watered by the streams: thou shalt plant in him the fruits of righteousness.