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LECTURE ON FASHION:
DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK LYCEUM,
I had thought — as is thought, perhaps,
by many who are now before me — that the
subject of fashion was one susceptible only
of very light handling — to be treated with
humor, anecdote, satire, and possibly some
moralizing upon its whims and follies. I
commenced the preparation of my lecture
with scarce more design than this.
It was suggested, very sensibly, I thought,
by one of the gentlemen who waited on me
with the invitation to lecture, that the subjects
were usually too dry; — that it would
be worth while to start a new range of
popular addresses — if not upon trifling topics,
at least upon such, as, conveying
information, would still bear embroidering
with trifles.
The subject of fashion was instanced and
approved. I thought I might easily entertain
an audience with a history of the follies
of fashion in different countries and times,
and that in the hearer's keener appreciation
of the absurdity of fashionable extremes,
from seeing them in the ludicrous light of
disuse and distance, might lie the utility of
such a lecture. Those who are familiar
with the literature of the sixteenth century
will remember that the fashions were, at that
day, the great target of pulpit eloquence —
that, with a vein half humorous, though
with violent denunciation, the clergy detailed
the follies of fashion, and dwelt upon
their sinfulness; and that more particularly
in New England, in the Puritan days of
Cotton Mather, this great Divine, and others,
held forth on this subject with the very
extremity of wrathful fervor.
A reference to the serious books and to
the sermons of that period would sufficiently
show, that, had I followed out my original
intention, and taken the fashions themselves
for the text and burthen of my lecture, I
should not have lacked for grave precedent,
nor for material and inference, worth the
while of both speaker and hearer. The
fashions are not my theme, however. Fashion
is — and between fashion and the fashions
you will at once comprehend the distinction.
Of the importance of the subject, in
the light in which I view it, you will be the
judges when you have heard me to the end
— but I may say, by way of bespeaking
your favorable attention, that I am inclined
to believe few topics — short of religion and
constitutional law — to be, at this period of
our country's history, of greater importance
to us. Before entering upon this generali
zing view, however, let me say a few words
on the fashions, as to the degree with which
they affect the standard of true taste — in this
same degree, giving weight and color to
fashion, in which taste and elegance are of
course prominent features.
The origin of fashion would probably
start even with the history of taste. The
first hour of a community's existence — if
created full grown, like the family of Deu
calion and Pyrrha — would betray differences
in the demeanor of men; and the most
graceful and showy would probably be “the
and homage is paid irresistibly, by all
human beings, to supremacy in elegance.
The rise and progress of fashion up to its
present condition, however, is not uniformly
a history of taste. What are more contradictory
than the caprices of fashion?
There are certain standards of beauty, decided
upon by the common instinct — standards
which artists irresistibly follow, and
which the eye invariably acknowledges
true, and these standards are as often violated
as adhered to, by the votaries of fashion.
The ladies very well know, that, be
their faces long or short — be their forms
queenly or fairy-like, — there is but one inexorable
size and shape for a fashionable
bonnet; and, of course, if one style of
beauty is favored, all others are unbecomingly
marred. The male figure, it has
been decided by centuries of progressive
art, has its laws of beauty, — but in the
fashions, of what age of civilized Europe
have not these laws been violated.
Strange to say, and worth speculating
on, if we had time for a digression, it is only
in the semi-barbarous nations — in modern
Greece and Turkey, and among the indolent
and unthinking tribes of the Asiatics, that
costume, once regulated by art, remains in
unchangeable good taste — comfortable and
convenient, as well as picturesque and becoming.
But look at the fashions of Europe.
Positively the most incredible true
books with which I am acquainted are the
amusing records of the fashions of the last
two hundred years in England. White
periwigs of enormous bulk, were, for instance,
the fashion for ladies in the beginning
of the seventeenth century. It is an
accredited fact, that there died in London
in 1756, a white-headed old woman of great
age, whose hoary hair, cut off after her
death, sold for fifty pounds to a ladies' periwig
maker. Black patches on the faces of
court beauties were the fashion in the same
age, and hoops and high heels — utter destruction
to grace of form and movement —
were worn by all ladies with any pretension
to quality It is a rule of art that, in
the male figure, the shoulders should be
broad, for beauty, and the hips narrow,
and it has been said in support of this
standard that it is an aristocratic formation
— as those whose ancestors had carried
burthens would naturally have large hips,
while those whose forefathers had been of
warlike habits and taken exercise principally
in the saddle, would be more developed
in the chest and shoulders. In the
teeth of the arts, however, and of these
aristocratic objections, padded hips were
the fashion in King James's time, while the
collarless coat, with seams converging to
the throat, narrowed the chest and shoulders
and gave to the male figure the outline
of the female.
Ridiculous as most fashions, when not
based upon legitimate principles of art, seem
at a distance, however, it is astonishing how
unaware the excesses creep upon us, and
how easily and unsuspectingly men of sense
pass, from ridiculing a new fashion, to approving
and adopting it. It would puzzle
any one present, except perhaps an
artist, to tell, in a moment, what are the
absurdities of the present fashions. Yet
absurdities there are, that will be laughed
at fifty years hence, and you can easily
detect them, by applying to the present
modes the severe test of their utility as
heighteners of natural beauty. And here
let me, in passing, throw a pebble into the
scale of art — hinting at the importance of
keeping in view the principles of art and
true elegance in adopting the changes of
the fashions. If the portraits of men of
mark and women of great beauty, in our age,
are to be painted for posterity, let it be
within the painter's power to make an artistic
disposition of drapery, without painting
his sitters in the unfitting costume of a classic
age, floating them in clouds, or disguising
them with cloaks and mantles. We
have all laughed at the portraits that have
descended to us from the days of periwigs
and red-heeled shoes. There have been
celebrated painters, who have followed the
fashions of the time even in historical pictures
— gravely representing the apostles and
in hoop and farthingale. There is no knowing
how far the habituation of monstrosities
in common wear may corrupt the taste even
of artists. I am not sure, by the way, that
the national style of dress may not have
something to do with the heroic in national
character. There was pride of country in a
Roman toga, that hardly appertains to a hat
and frock coat; and Cesar's death might not
have descended so dramatically to posterity,
if, instead of wrapping his head majestically
in his mantle, he had fallen at the base of
Pompey's statue — with his overcoat pulled
over him!
Leaving the fashions with thus much of
notice, I come now to the subject of FASHION
— a term of most elusive and changeable
import, and expressive of a condition of life,
which it is next to impossible to analyze or
define. Fashion is a position in society —
attained by different avenues in different
countries — but, however arrived at, giving
its possessor consequence in common report,
value in private life, authority in all
matters of taste, and influence in every
thing. Rightly to appreciate what fashion
is, or rather what it is likely to be hereafter
in our own country, let us, without defining
it further, look a little into what it is abroad.
Let us see what fashion is in France, and
what it is in England — for it is from these
two countries, only, that we borrow any
thing in the way of social distinctions — and
by contrast with our future models, we can
the more easily make out what fashion is
in the great metropolis of our own country,
if not as to which way it is tending.
There is wonderful activity of amusement
in all the grades of society in Paris, and no
one class, or grade, wastes much time in
thinking about the other — differing in this
respect, (I may say in passing), from England,
where all classes that pretend to society
at all, occupy themselves to any uncomfortable
degree with gazing enviously at the
highest. Of necessity, in a monarchical
country, rank has its weight, and the ancient
nobility of France can scarcely be said
to be out of fashion, though the verbal ho
mage and high consideration with which persons
of noble family are invariably named,
is merely nominal and ceremonious, and the
old families, unless fashionable from intrinsic
causes, are practically shelved and forgotten
in the celebrated Faubourg where
they reside. Wealth, too, as in all countries,
has its weight, and the rich man in
Paris may soar, on wings of lavish expense,
to the acquaintance of fashionable people;
though, like Icarus with his wings of wax,
he drops like a clod when his wings are
melted. The court-circle — those who are
officially or amicably in habits of intercourse
with the family of the king, are
not necessarily, the fashion. But beyond
the control of either of these three powerful
grades of society, — rank, wealth and
court favor — there exists in Paris a sphere of
fashion; and whatever else may purchase
admission to it by outlay of splendor, or
come into temporary contact with it by
caprice or accident, there is but one homogeneous
and predominating principle in it
— but one invariable “open sesame,” and
that is, INTELLECT! Personal beauty goes far
in France, but it must be accompanied by
the tact of being agreeable, or, if it were
Venus herself, the beauty would soon be
ridiculed and reglected. Celebrity, of every
description, is a passport to fashion. Celebrated
players and singers, travellers, soldiers,
artists, scholars, statesmen and diplomatists,
range freely through the penetralia
of Parisian fashion. Nothing is excluded
that is eminent — that is distinguished, that
can amuse. All manner of mental superiority
is unhesitatingly acknowledged. And,
intellect being the constituency of this legislature
of fashion, who are its leaders. The
manifest controllers of the tide of thought
and of the great interests of the present hour
— the living authors, the editors of newspapers,
active politicians, resident diplomatists,
and talented clergy — these are the influential
leaders of fashionable society in Paris,
and the indispensable guests at all fashionable
entertainments. With all the French
passion for dress and elegance, they exact
nothing ornamental in the persons of their
and artists. They appreciate eminence
in dress and personal accomplishment, for
it is a shape of talent, and the consummate
dandy has commonly a passport in his tact
and wit — but the lions of Paris are as often
ill-dressed and awkward as the contrary,
and the mere exteriors of men have little
to do with making them permanently fashionable.
A sphere of society so constituted
is teeming with power, for, besides standing
at the very fountain of respect, which is intellect,
it is contributed to by all the different
levels of life in that great metropolis —
taking to itself the ambitious core and spirit
of every class, rank and condition. Its
power, too, goes farther than mere opinion.
The most conspicuous members of the present
government of France, were first the
idols of its fashionable society — as editors of
newspapers, poets and men of science. Intellect
like theirs, however manifested, is
the road to fashion, and, driven onward by
fashionable influence and eclat, it is the
easy and flowery road to every thing desirable
in position and power. Without digressing
to look for the causes of this in the
political and moral revolutions of France,
let me say simply of the present hour, that
if there be in the world an indisputable republic
of intellect, it is the fashionable society
of witty and giddy Paris!
Let us glance now at fashion in England
— differing from that of France in some very
essential particulars. Rank, is more highly
prized in England. A man who is noble-born
is already three fourths fashionable —
the remaining fourth depending not at all
on his fortune, but wholly on his appearance
and manners. A clownish young lord,
or a girl who is Right Honorably plain and
awkward, though presentable at court, and
invited for form's sake to the sweeping
entertainments which embrace the giver's
entire acquaintance, can never be fashionable,
and is pointedly overlooked in the
invitations to parties more select, and very
soon discouraged and mortified out of society.
Wealth has much less influence than
in France, in making its possessor fashiona
ble. A person who is merely wealthy — not
ornamental to society in his own person, is
hopelessly shut out from the sphere of the
exclusives. A certain competency, it is true,
is necessary to fashion. A stylish man in
London must spend three times as much as
would serve his purpose in France, in having
about him the appointments of a gentleman,
including an equipage. But, beyond
what is necessary for his own personal elegance,
and convenience, he requires no
riches to pass freely through all the favoritism
of fashion. The immense number
of wealthy people in England has neutralized
the distinction of wealth; and money,
nowhere in the world, I think, goes so little
way as in that country, beyond providing
for personal luxury and comfort.
Rank and wealth, then, not being invariable
passports to fashion in London, we
come next to the third social estate — that
of intellect. Your mind immediately passes
in review the politicians, the men of science,
the authors, dramatists, artists — whose
names — written at the height they have
attained to, are legible at the distance at
which we read them — the breadth of the
Atlantic! You ask — has the genius that
makes these men immortal, made them the
favorites of the hour they illuminate — the
fashion in the country on which they shed
lustre! When they are down from the
height of inspiration in which their wings
were visible to the universe, do the choicest
of fair women and noble men, contend, as
in France, to do them honor and give them
pleasure? No! The exclusive sphere in
England has no such class in its confidence,
as men of genius. A man whose star has
culminated — who has forced the world to
hear of him by some undeniable burst of
intellect — finds his way open, it is true,
into the houses of the nobility, and into
the more common resorts of the fashionables.
He is the “lion of the season” — and
what the position is, of the merely intellectual
lion in the fashionable circle of
England, English writers have honestly
enough put down! It is a hell of invisible
humiliations! Not to offend any
suppose Keats, the apothecary's boy, to
have returned from Italy, where he died;
and, having outlived the sneer of the highborn
critic who counselled him to “return
to his gallipots,” to have become a lion in
London society. He had nothing in birth,
or personal appearance, to give him value
— nothing but incomparable genius — that
which, in all theories and essays on the
distinctions of life, is put down as the noblest
aristocracy. He would have been
invited every where! He would have dined
and supped and danced, if he liked, in every
nobleman's house in London, and would
have been, for a season or two, constantly
in the presence of the exclusives, male and
female. But the entrance to the nobleman's
house, and the nobleman's condescension
at dinner, and the attentive listening
of the entire company to his eloquent
conversation, would never have broken
down the wall of glass between him and
the ladies of his host's family and circle!
The belles of Almack's would never have
known Mr. Keats. The beauties familiar
with the dandies of St. James street, would
as soon have thought of feeling a tenderness
for a Chinese juggler who had amused
them, as for the literary lion they had listened
to at dinner. There is an invariable
manner of uninterested and polite sufferance,
cultivated for the express use of a
non-conductor between the exclusives and
the unprivileged who may have access to
their resorts. This has been felt by every
self-made celebrated man in England, and
as most of them have been content with
one or two seasons of such life, men of
genius, unless newly risen, are seldom to
be found in vogue among the exclusives.
But the sphere exists — powerful, splendid,
and dazzling to all eyes, — the sphere
of high fashion in England, — and what is
the key to it, and for whom are its intoxicating
triumphs?
In civilization, as in many other things,
extremes meet. The highest possible cultivation
approaches nearest to the simplicity
of nature, and England, which, at this
moment, probably, is at a higher point of
civilization than was ever before attained,
shows, in its most accomplished circle, the
nearest approach to nature. The passport
to fashion in England is that which would
be a passport to pre-eminence in an Indian
tribe — beauty of person combined with assurance
and a natural air of superiority. With
a mien of graceful boldness, and such a face
and form as would suit a sculptor, or grace
a chief, the son of a country curate in England
may pluck fashion from an earl. And
the same with the other sex. With no pretension
to parentage or position, above respectability,
a girl of remarkable beauty,
let it be only such beauty as would sit
gracefully upon title, and bear itself proudly
among the proud, is marked from her childhood
for high connection. She attracts the
regard of her titled neighbors, is taken up
as a guest to London, and made the belle
of the season, and, if an attachment spring
up between her and a man of rank, the
passion is fanned and favored by generous
acclamation. The exclusives rejoice in an
addition of beauty to their set, and the coronet
is more graced from being worn even by
plebeian blood, more gracefully.
I am not sure that this is not a commendable
aristocracy — at least not sure that the
acknowledging and adopting of nature's
stamp of superiority is not the best secret
for the securing of power and influence
to the most elevated class. The
finest race in the eastern hemisphere —
the most gallant and manly in its men,
and the most beautiful and high-born
looking in its women — is the fashionable
aristocracy of England. The requisite
loftiness of bearing which accompanies
the beauty admired by this class, is not
attained without superiority in the natural
character, and the successful fashionables
of England are the best stuff, I believe
— the men for action, and the women for
the maternity of nature's noblemen. I am
inclined to think, I repeat, that nature's
mark of superiority is well and wisely acknowledged.
The balance of the physical
and intellectual endowments — the power
and with a superiority that all men can appreciate
— may be, to the eye of nature, superior
to what we call genius — superior to the
concentration of the whole force upon particular
qualities of the brain. There are,
doubtless, many men, wholly undistinguished,
who yet, in the harmonious proportion
of their persons and character —
in their sufficiency of brain for all the exigences
of action, and of spirit and dignity
to carry out all the desirable purposes of
the brain, are superior to geniuses, born for
nothing but to write books of fancy, or
made immortal by a disproportioned development
of one faculty only. Upon such
men, — upon poets and novelists, artists and
musicians — nature has rarely put her legible
stamp of “first quality.” It has been the
complaint of genius, through all ages, that
its superiority has not been acknowledged;
and it seems to be an invariable instinct in
human nature not to acknowledge it, where
the writer and his personal qualities are
known. May it not be natural therefore,
to revolt against disproportion in endowment
— and may not our great admiration
for authors at a distance, and our diminished
homage when we know them, lie in the
disappointment we feel that they are not as
remarkable in other respects as in power of
fancy — an instinctive feeling that the excess
of this quality is at the expense of
others as desirable?
This is something of a digression — but
before leaving the subject of English fashion,
let me remark upon the prodigious influence
of the fashionable class in England,
and the likelihood that it works as an important
weight in the balance of power in
that country. It is time, I think, that like
the addition in France, of the Tiers Etat to
the political divisions of Church and State.
Fashion, in England, should be named as a
power, after King, Lords and Commons.
It is a combination — a class — an order — formed
exclusively from no other class — capable,
as was shown in Brummel's time, of giving
a slight to the blood royal, and in the constant
habit of putting down rank that does
not look like rank, and selecting nature's
favorites from the people. The Queen
fears it — the nobility courts it — the people
worship it. It makes and unmakes popular
idols. It rules the stage. It puts down
pretension. It is always elegant and lofty,
even in its oppressions. It fosters taste. It
maintains the beautiful against the costly,
— and it has for its exclusive use, and with
power to direct them alike against overbearing
authority and vulgar wealth, the
formidable weapons of contempt and ridicule.
In all monarchies that ever existed
before, the aristocracy have dwindled in
mind and person by the exclusive intermarriage
of noble blood. England is the
first that has made tributary the nobility
of nature, taking grafts from th strong
and beautiful, wherever grew strength and
beauty in the capricious garden of superiority.
A revolution cannot put down
such a class! There is a natural homage in
the high and low-born alike, paid, without
stint or scruple, to the stamp of God. The
aristocracy of England, with all their pride
and superciliousness towards those who
crowd upon their skirts, is acknowledged
and admired, by the mass of the people, as
was never another aristocracy by its plebeian
countrymen. The existence of such a
class, I repeat, is important to the balance
of power in England. The tides of opinion,
that would meet, embattled in opposing
floods — the arbitrary dictates of the court
on the one hand, and the rebellious spirit
of a people never consulted, on the other,
— find, in this intermediate class, a break-water,
that is a continual check to overflow
and devastation.
The next step in my argument is to get,
if possible, the same generalizing view of
the great metropolis of this country — to see
what it is that gives fashion and consequence
in New York. Let me premise,
however, that my remarks will apply to
no other city in this country, nor would
they have been true of New York forty
years ago. In cities of a certain size —
cities with the population of Boston, Philadelphia
and Albany — the natural claims
and combined with wealth and personal
worth, they take rank with little opposition.
In a metropolis of four hundred
thousand inhabitants, these same distinctions
are lost in the number of claimants;
and, in what I have to say of New York,
I confine myself to the period since this
state of things has existed — the last fifteen
or twenty years, during which the
old aristocracy of the Knickerbockers has
been shoved aside, by the enormous increase
of wealthy and pretentious population.
In the particular period at which we live,
our country differs from all the nations of
the earth in one remarkable feature — that
of being in a state of social transition unexampled
for extent and rapidity — passing,
that is to say, by lightning leaps of ambitious
imitation, from plain to sumptuous,
from primitive to luxurious. Study the progresss
of innovations upon the manners of
older countries. See with what reluctant
advance, one by one, the few foreign
usages that prevail in England and France
have crept respectively upon those complacent
countries. How little that is French
there is in England — how little that is English
in France! And with what an unnaturalized
strangeness these few outlandish
features are incorrigibly worn. Here, on
the contrary, in the cities of America, customs
that would be twenty years obtaining
foothold in Europe, are adopted at sight —
domesticated and made universal in a single
season. Our commerce is on the alert, our
merchants are novelty-seeking travellers,
ready to freight ships with any thing they
find that would be new at home, and we
have not a single prejudice in our national
character which shuts the door upon an
innovation. Nothing appears abroad — in
dress, equipage, usage of society, style of
furniture or mode of amusement, that is not
conjured over the water with aeriel quickness,
copied with marvellous fidelity in
New York, and incorporated at once into
national habituation. The drawing-rooms
of our wealthy classes are types, neither
faint nor imperfect, of the sumptuous interiors
of May Fair, and of the exclusive
saloons of France. Our ladies are scarce
thirty days behind the fashions of Paris. A
change in men's dress in St. James street,
is adopted in New York before it is detected
east of Temple Bar. The stained glass
of Bohemia, while still a curiosity in England,
had grown common upon our dinner-tables.
The toys of the age of Louis the
Fourteenth, Egyptian couches, and the
carved furniture of the age of Elizabeth,
have been in turn the fashion abroad, and,
of either style, there were profuse specimens
in common wear among us, while the
novelty was still fresh in the capitals of Europe.
We copy every thing we can hear
of — import and imitate instantly every new
model of equipage — follow every whim of
society, take the new dance, the new by-word,
the new public amusement, — and
enter heart and soul into every rage that is
handed over to us, dramatic, operatic, sumptuary,
and literary. This daguerreotype imitation
is no less improving in its results,
however, than it is miraculous for its facile
rapidity. We have beaten England and
France in progressive civilization and elevation,
three centuries in one. At this rate,
and with the increasing facilities of commerce,
we shall soon have nothing to learn
from Europe, but what transpires between
the traverses of packets — and when that
period arrives, we shall be, of all countries
the most cosmopolite — comparing with other
nations as the enlightened and liberal traveller
compares with the home-keeping villager.
I am anticipating, however. Before
saying more of the future, let us take
our proposed view of the present — as shown
in the fashion of this great metropolis.
Though there is probably a greater market
for the fashions in New-York than in
any other capital in the world, (from the
fact that all classes, above the lowest, dress
as extravagantly here as only the first class
does abroad) there is still very little of what
can be fairly fixed upon as fashion. No one
circle confessedly holds the power. Of
rank, we can hardly name the value in
it has the exaggerated value of an exotic —
much more worshipped here than where
it comes from. It does not strike me, however,
that we show any symptoms of relish
for the indigenous rank that would naturally
be now taking root in the families
among us most honorably descended. It
would require some research to discover, in
New York, even the residences of those
whose fathers' names are in the page of our
history. Wherever they are, they get little
position, consequence, or fashion, from the
mere eminence of their forefathers — few of
them it is certain, being even what the most
conspicuous people would call “in society.”
I think this will bear putting still
more strongly, and that I may venture to
say there is an instinctive hostility to the
assumption of consequence by old families
and somewhat, perhaps, from a feeling
on the part of the undistinguished, that
there is still a chance for competition with
dignities of so recent date, but more from
the application of that exacting standard,
by which merit in the inheritor alone
makes valid an inheritance of glory.
In the absence of rank, and particularly
in a republic, you would naturally suppose
that official power — the appointment by
public honor to the highest dignities of the
State — would give, to the family of the
holder, a deference that would make them
the fashion. Yet you all know the value
of this claim to consequence! The Governor,
Secretary, Treasurer of the State, the
Senators and Representatives of the Sovreign
People, come and go with no more
eclat than other men, and their families are
no more sought, imitated or caressed, for
their official dignity. It neither makes a
man nor his family particularly the fashion
in New York, if he be Mayor of the city;
though, in the administration of his office,
he exercises a sway as powerful for the
time being, as many a crowned head of
feudal Europe. Instead of fashionable homage,
paid to such dignity as we had a
nand in making, we seem on the contrary
to feel for it a fashionable indifference.
Is it here as in France, and does intellect
give consequence in New York? Does
wit in man, or conversational talent in woman,
make the possessor an indispensable
acquaintance to all givers of fashionable
parties. Are the powerful controllers of
public opinion, the gentlemen of the press
— keepers as they are, or might be, of the
key of each momentous to-morrow — are
they, in a country where the press, far
more than in France, is the citadel of power
— are they, as in France, courted for their
intellect, and for the influence they could
give to the class they particularly belonged
to. Are the gentlemen of the bar — the gladiators
of intellect — who, in society, as in
courts of justice, have on their armor of wit,
and in the absence of any class possessing
the leisure to be conversationists only, are
the most amusing as well as the most improving
members of society — are they sought
for by the ambitious, and are their houses
and resorts made fashionable by their intellect?
Are men of science, distinguished
artists, poets, authors, politicians and native
celebrities generally — is this varied body of
men, representing certainly the intellect of
the day, sought out for fashionable entertainments,
courted, and made friends and
favorites of, by fashionable women? These
questions are answered by the reasonableness
of a doubt — whether one in ten of
the most pretentious fashionables of New
York, have any definite idea who are the
intellectual masters and controllers of that
grand vehicle of society to which they
themselves are — the incomparable varnish!
Is it then as in England? Does fashionable
society take pains to secure to itself
Nature's mark of aristocracy? Are the rare
accidents of mingled grace and beauty — the
lovely and admirable women who do live
sometimes in unfashionable neighborhoods,
and do belong to families that are only respectable,
— are such ornaments of their sex
sought out for embellishment to fashionable
parties, or would they find the way easy if
they attempted to rise, by their own exertions,
to spheres more suitably ornamental?
Is masculine beauty — combined with a look
superiority — are these attractions, in a youth
of unknown family and of no fortune, sufficient
to give him, in New York as in England,
easy access to fashionable circles, and
consequence and influence, the town over,
in all matters of taste and elegance? These
questions, too, are easily answered by a reasonable
doubt — whether a well-bred stranger,
thrown into a mixed assembly in New
York, would not make blunders, (as he
hardly could do in England), in an attempt
to pick out the fashionables by their look
of aristocracy.
Nature's stamp of nobility, then, not being
a passport to fashion in New York —
nor family name and descent — nor intellect
— nor that official dignity, which in theory,
you would say, should give rank in a republic
— what is the predominating principle
of fashion? What is it that gives consequence
and enviable station?
There is a condition of life in that city,
which without forming a definite and combined
class, as in France and England,
may still be called “the fashion” — a kind
of quicksand of conspicuousness and consequence,
stable hitherto for no footing, but
crowded successively by exclusives, few
of whom have ever kept their place long
enough to be identified by public rumor.
The uncertainty as to who the fashionables
are, is somewhat increased, too, by
their great number, as no recognizable circle
ever comes twice together, and no
twenty fashionables would agree as to the
fashionables of twenty more. The great
secret of vogue in this upper sphere — the
passport to its conspicuousness and consequence,
— is not exactly money — not exactly
the being rich — but expense, and the
dressing, driving and entertaining with
lavish expensiveness. Extravagance, here,
takes the place that, in France, is given to
intellect, and in England, to the nobility
of nature. It is true, that even under this
dynasty, it has not invariably been as difficult
as now to tell who were the leading
fashionables of New York. Fashion, from
time to time, has made head and taken a
stand, and within my own memory of New
York society, fifteen or twenty years, there
have been eight or ten confident and established
aristocracies. They have risen and
fallen, duly, with “the stocks” — but never
before, after the break up of a Board of
Fashionable Directors, has there been so
prolonged a state of anarchy as exists at
this moment. The great convulsion in
Wall street in '36, scattered the last definite
combination of “people necessary to
know;” and since that time there has
never been a circle that was not rivalled
by twenty others, nor have there been
any leaders of fashion, nameable without
a smile to two consecutive believers.
Fashion there is — the fashion as I said
before of conspicuousness in expense — but
it is a commonwealth without government
or centre — without limits or barriers.
Any body belongs to it who spends up to
the mark, and if there are any two who
have combined to be exclusive, or make “a
set” — it is by no means generally suspected!
This state of promiscuous pomp, however,
cannot long exist. It would not have
existed till now, if money alone could
make, again, a potentate among fashionables.
The ambition to be, as the French
say, “the cream of the cream” is not
wanting. It never sleeps. But money —
mere money — is omnipotent no more! The
setting up of an equipage, the adopting of
crest and livery, and the giving of balls and
dinners, can but make a man — now — one of
five hundred. Not till this five hundred is
decimated to fifty, by some other superiority,
that, with the aid of money, can make
itself paramount, and not till that fifty is
decimated, still again, to five, who, by
the consent of the fifty, shall be their leaders
and rulers, will there be a fashion in
New York, worth courting or fearing. Is
this a consummation to be wished? I think
I can show you that it is!
The very core and essence of that which
constitutes a republic is the first principle
in fashion — rebellion against unnatural authority.
What would be the state of England
at this enlightened day, with no counterpoise
of birth, and no asylum in society
from the overbearing haughtiness of official
and court privilege? There would be
a tyranny of ill-endowed aristocrats — the
more tyrannical in proportion as they were
more brutal; — and a chasm between them
and the people — between them and humble-born
merit, which, if not crossed by
the bridge of a revolution, would engulf
them in the darkness of feudal barbarism.
Now, there is a republic in the heart of
monarchical England — fashion, ruled by the
manifest stamp of superiority. There is a
republic in the heart of monarchical France
— fashion, ruled by wit and intellect. These
are intermediate powers inseparable from
a state of high civilization, let the government
be what it will. Under the two
hoary monarchies just named, they are
a check to the tyranny of rank, the insolence
of wealth and the pomposity of the
court — to all of which intolerable evils the
smile or frown of fashion is wholesomely
and triumphantly paramount. But have
we no work for Fashion to do in America?
Are there no monsters to be put down by
a combination of refinement and intellect?
Have we no evils in our system of society,
no oppressions, likely to get the upper
hand of a republic, and for which we need
therefore the well-tried countercheck of
fashion?
Rank — we have none to contend against.
Court favor, as dispensed at Washington,
makes no man formidable. The influence
of mere wealth, as I have already said, is
evidently on the wane — though were it not
so, the tyranny of a sordid aristocracy of
money might indeed call for a well-armed
antagonist. A monster there is, however,
reigning over this country, strange to say,
in the shape of its greatest blessing — a
monster it would scarce be safe to name,
without first unmasking and showing his
deformity, and, for this monster, we require
the check that can alone be given by the
combination I speak of as fashion, for it is
the only shape and mouth-piece he will
not himself usurp and turn to his tyranni
cal uses. Look a little into his anatomy.
To how many men in a hundred, taken
indiscriminately from the miscellaneous
population of New York, would you entrust
a decision upon any question that
affected your personal position or happiness.
Count among them the vicious, the
wilful, the ignorant and short-sighted, —
who are, and must necessarily be, in a
great metropolis like this, the majority in
numbers. In the capitals of other countries
the ignorant and vicious classes have
little or no moral power — no power at all,
except in the hand to hand conflict of a
revolution. In this country every one of
them forms part of the constituency of a
newspaper and has a voice as loud as your
own on all questions that can come to the
threshold of public notice. With such a
population as America had in '76, this
level suffrage of opinion was the heaven
of liberty. Taking the country, now, from
ocean to ocean, it is so still. But in our
great cities — more especially in our greatest
city — the proportion of evil in the population
gives danger to its sovereign impulse.
Free discussion and the vigilance of patriots,
may control it on great questions, and
if every so-called popular impulse were
fairly dragged to light, and known by
honest counting to be the wish of the majority,
it would be still more effectually
bridled. But no! The oracle of the people
finds utterance when the people are
asleep. The monster I have not yet named
is enthroned within it, and it is he,
and not the people, speaking oftenest in
its voice of thunder. The laws are palsied
by his threat — private character trembles in
its sanctuary — the arts and all the interests
of taste and elegance are benumbed and
discouraged, and while the public is a
“chartered libertine,” the individual is a
slave, for no man dare do otherwise than
as the mass approve, for fear of detraction
and outcry. It is in this monster that envy
and ill-will, and the natural hatred of the
low and vicious for those above them, find
a ready weapon for their malice. Desperate
men who have seen better days, and tyrants
never a lack in any community of the
earth, are the ready trumpeters of the will
of this many-eyed monster. And now shall
I tell you his false name? Shall I tell you
what lurks in the shadow of liberty, like
oppression behind a throne of a monarch?
You have anticipated it by my description.
It is unexamined, unauthorized, uncontrolled
PUBLIC OPINION — the monster whose false
throat claims utterance for the people. The
judge on the bench thinks of him in his
verdict. The criminal at the bar trusts him
more than his lawyer. He points his finger,
and the representative of the people
turns bully in the halls of legislation. He
stands before the statesman — hiding from
him the page of history and posterity's contempt.
Women dreads him on her pillow
— for detraction is his most appetizing food.
Religion trembles at her altar — for, on the
ashes of the house of God he avenges an
insult to his myrmidons.
But it is not alone in shapes so palpable
to view that this black shadow of freedom
stalks through a republic. There is a tyrranny
of public opinion, in every grade and
biding-place of this country — worn so habitually
as to be thought an inseparable
evil of human society — worn like the hair
shirt of penance till its irritation has become
a habit of second nature. It takes
twice as bold a man here as in Europe, to
be economical — twice as bold a man to prefer
paying a debt to putting his name to a
subscription. We put ourselves to twice
the inconvenience here, that people in Europe
do, to seem what we are expected to
be by our neighbors. The pain and mortification
of reducing our style of living to
suit a reduced prosperity in business, is
twice, here, what it is abroad — thrice what
it need be. And on the other hand, look
at the invidious criticism and malice drawn
upon men or women, by any step, however
well it can be afforded, toward embellishing
their condition of life. We do not live in
liberty, here — we do not spend our money
or enjoy our firesides in rational freedom.
The country is free, the press is free, reli
gion is free, and public opinion remarkably
free — but the individual is a slave! The
stab of Brutus was struck at nothing half so
tyrannical in the bosom of Cesar as our despotism
— despotism of the public of which
we, who suffer, severally make one. Since
government was first invented, the most
dreaded evil has been tyranny in the sovereign
power. In a monarchy the king
holds the power, and the people and private
life are to be protected against the
king. In a republic the people are the
sovereign, and the laws and private life
are to be protected against the people.
The President is but the subservient prime
minister of the sovereign people. His
many-headed master never loses him from
his sight one hour: and while in a monarchy
there is an appeal, from the oppression
of the king to the vengeance of the people,
in a republic there is no appeal from oppression
but to God — for who can impeach
the sovereign people!
You may think, if you have not given
me your close attention that I have wandered
from my subject. But no. It is in
my subject — in the influence of a circle of
acknowledged fashion — that I see a release
from this invisible monster. As Leatherstocking
said when the Prairie was burning,
“fire shall fight fire.” Opinion from
a more authentic source, shall stem and
countercheck opinion. We are awed, now,
by what we vaguely suppose the public to
think. Give us a class whose opinion
is entitled to undeniable weight — a class
whose judgment is made up from elevated
standards — a class whose favor is alike valuable
to the ambitious of both sexes — a class
it is important to know and propitiate if
possible, but at any rate to quote as unquestionable
authority — and the evil is at
once abated. The most radiant feature as
well as the most salutary principle of modern
civilization is the organizing in France
and England of the classes I have described
— umpires between tyranny and the
people, — arbiters, that with right on their
side are stronger than the despot. As I
have endeavored to show, this umpire in
of nature's aristocracy. In France
it is fashion, made all but sovereign in its
influence, by the enlisting of intellect. In
our country, as you all know, the class that
is destined to protect us against our shape
of the tyranny universal on earth, is still
unorganized, and the locum tenes, the
temporary key of fashionable superiority,
is showy expensiveness. But this anarchy
is not to last — nor, (I trust you are
prepared to agree with me,) is it desirable
that it should. I may venture, I think, to
predict, by shadows cast before, that it is
on the eve, now, of a new and lasting formation.
But, of what stuff is to be built our inner
republic? Who, in our great metropolis, is
to be eligible to that privileged class whose
judgment shall rebuke the unweighed opinions
of the mass, as well as the insolence
of overbearing wealth and authority. The
material lies about us in prodigal abundance.
We have intellect, of God's purest
kindling, burning before our eyes like stars
before our closed windows in the last watch
before morning. We have nature's nobility
— men of such spirit and bearing, and women
of such talent and beauty, as would
draw homage alike from the Indian on the
Prairie, or the exclusives at Almack's. We
have master-spirits — men who possess the
unaccountable, but lordly, power of control
over popular masses — capable of swaying
the most important flood-tides of the political
sea, yet not capable of giving infiuence
or fashion to their families, or the circles
they live in. We have every degree, range,
and quality, of material for fashion, in as
great abundance as any country on earth.
And now, of what stuff, I ask again, is to
be moulded our fashionable republic — what
class of superiority is to be set up for our
umpire — counterpoise, to protect the subject
individual against the sovereign people?
In this question the whole country has a
voice. With the rapid and facile intercourse
between our cities, and with our
singularly gregarious habits — the distinguished
of all the cities of the union, com
ing frequently together — every society in
the country can influence the character of
aristocracy in the metropolis. That metropolis
is the great throbbing heart in
whose pulsations the distant hand and foot
have sympathy and influence. It was time
— high time — that attention was called to
the quality of the blood at this heart of
our country. We have kept our vigils on
all other subjects — we have slept at our
watch over this! The first beat of this
chronic pulse may be regulated, easily and
irresistibly, by public volition. The fear is
that the wrong elements may creep insensibly
uppermost, and ossify into power
without moulding or controlling! It was
time, I say, that it should become a question
of lively agitation, — in the metropolis
and in every city in the Union — of what
stuff is to be formed the coming American
aristocracy? Discussion, enquiry, active
ridicule of false pretension, and generous
approbation of that which is truly admirable,
are means — ample means — in our
hands, to make it what we will. Let us
beware, however — for, choose what we will
— do homage to what we may, as worthy of
privilege and distinction — whatever we do
choose — whatever becomes the fashion, with
the consequence that fashion is destined to
have, — accumulates power from the moment
of taking the lead, and is elevated in
character, as well as hedged about with
protection and aggrandizement! It is for
the general vigilance — for you, on your part
— to say, whether high morality shall be
indispensable to fashion. It is for you to
say, (and these are important questions)
whether political rectitude shall give consequence
to a man in the highest circle,
or whether men who value consequence
and position, shall dare to meddle with
politics at all. In short, whether the “almighty
dollar” — whether intellect, as shown
in wit or conversation, or as shown in
the arts, the press and the professions —
whether official rank, or manifest superiority,
as stamped by nature on strength
and beauty — whether one, or any combination
of these, is to be the confessed
be decided.
I have discoursed more gravely of fashion
than was perhaps anticipated — less amuseingly
and more gravely than I might have
done, it is certain. Fashion is a trifling
word, and there are those to whom words
never change meaning or value. Important
as it may become, too, in the aggregate,
fashion is known, and contributed to,
by what the wise call trifles. Trifles they
are — and so are the foam-bubbles on the advancing
wave! But that glittering crest is
no more certain to be the rider upon a tide,
fetterless and resistless, than are the trifles
of fashion the precursors of a powerful element,
surging in, at this hour, upon the yet
incomplete character of our country. Shall
we be indifferent to the beauty or the deformity,
the viciousness or the healthfulness
of this impending aristocracy? Is it
not worth while — momentously worth while
— to arrest its presuming avatar, outside the
citadel of power, and challenge its authority
from God and reason! I may give it you
as my opinion, that aristocracy in a republic
must needs be more powerful than
those of monarchies, limited or despotic —
for it must fight the whole battle of superiority,
unaided by rank, prejudice or long
usage. Its formation were inevitable at
this stage of our progress, even were we
alone in the world — for there is no high
civilization without it — but we are borrowing,
as I said before, the social usages, as
well as the fashions and luxuries, of the
countries over the water — borrowing forms
and laws of aristocracy faster than fashions
or luxuries. And is not this a matter of
interest to the public? “Where lies power?”
“Where are the combinations that
hold power?” are questions for the patriot
and statesman — questions answered, wide
of the mark, by the hackneyed divisions of
political economy. “Church and state,”
“rich and poor,” “King, Lords and Commons,”
give no clue to the power paramount
in England — the well-organized
mastery of fashion! Let no man think it
impossible that a class designated by so
trifling a word as fashion, may soon crowd
mammon from our altars, and become the
antagonists of ill-begotten, public opinion,
and the oracle of all that affects the individual.
This, I repeat again, is the coming
epoch in our social history. Thus far — to
this level of preparation for an aristocracy —
America has built her pyamid of civilization
— overtaking astonished Europe, centuries
in a day. To top this pyramid —
to complete our broad-based and towering
republic, we have a class to create — a
summit-stone to lay — to which we can
point without shame or hesitation, when
it is lifted to the scrutiny of the world.
Thank God, we have yet the time and
opportunity to decide, from what quarry
it shall be hewn, and to what mortar of
public sentiment it shall owe its stability!
NOTE.
It may amuse the reader to quote a chapter
from one of the serious works on the
fashions referred to in the beginning of the
Lecture. “THE SIMPLE COBBLER OF
AGAWAM,” the work from which it was
taken, was a classic of the sixteenth century,
written by a New England emigrant clergyman,
Rev. Nathaniel Ward. He thus discourses
of the lady fashions of New-England
of that day: —
“Should I not keepe promise in speaking
a little to Womens fashions, they would
take it unkindly: I was loath to pester better
matter with such stuffe; I rather thought
it meet to let them stand by themselves, like
the Quœ Genus in the Grammar, being Deficients,
or Redundants, not to be brought
under any Rule: I shall therefore make bold
for this once, to borrow a little of their loose
tongued Liberty, and mispend a word or
two upon their long-wasted, but short-skirted
no harme.
Ridentem dicere verum, quid prohibet?
That Language be adapted to the Theme
He that to Parrots speaks, must parrotize:
He that instructs a foole, may act th' unwise.
It is known more then enough that I am
neither Nigard, nor Cinick, to the due
bravery of the true Gentry: if any man mislikes
a bully mong drossock more then I, let
him take her for his labour: I honour the
woman that can honour her selfe with her
attire; a good Text alwayes deserves a fair
Margent: I am not much offended if I see a
trimme, far trimmer than she that wears it:
in a word, whatever Christianity or Civility
will allow, I can afford with London measure:
but when I heare a nugiperous Gentledame
inquire what dresse the Queen is in
this week: what the nudiustertian fashion
of the Court is; I meane the very newest:
with egge to be in it in all haste, what ever
it be; I look at her as the very gizzard of a
trifle, the product of a quarter of a cypher,
the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kickt, if
shee were of a kickable substance, than
either honour'd or humour'd.
To speak moderately, I truly confesse, it
is beyond the ken of my understanding to
conceive, how those women should have
any true grace, or valuable vertue, that have
so little wit, as to disfigure themselves with
such exotick garbes, as not only dismantles
their native lovely lustre, but transclouts
them into gant bar-geese, ill-shapen-shotten-shell-fish,
Egyptian Hyeroglyphicks, or at
the best into French flurts of the pastery,
which a proper English woman should
scorne with her heels: it is no marvell they
weare drailes on the hinder part of their
heads, having nothing as it seems in the
fore-part, but a few Squirrils brains to help
them frisk from one ill-favour'd fashion to
another.
Are empty thin brain'd shells, and fiddling Kits.
The very troublers and impoverishers of
mankind, I can hardly forbear to commend
to the world a saying of a Lady living some
time with the Queen of Bohemia, I know
not where shee found it, but it is pitty it
should be lost.
Women and care, and care and women, and women and care and trouble.
The Verses are even enough for such odde
pegma's. I can make my selfe sicke at any
time, with comparing the dazzling splender
wherewith our Gentlewomen were embellished
in some former habits, with the gut-foundred
goosdom, wherewith they are now
surcingled and debauched. Wee have about
five or six of them in our Colony: if I see
any of them accidentally, I cannot cleanse
my phansie of them for a moneth after. I
have been a solitary widdower almost twelve
yeares, purposed lately to make a step over
to my Native Country for a yoke-fellow:
but when I consider how women there have
tripe-wifed themselves with their cladments,
I have no heart to the voyage, least their
nauseous shapes and the Sea, should work
too sorely upon my stomach. I speak sadly;
me thinkes it should breake the hearts
of Englishmen to see so many goodly English-women
imprisoned in French Cages,
peering out of their hood-holes for some men
of mercy to help them with a little wit, and
no body relieves them.
It is a more common then convenient
saying, that nine Taylors make a man: it
were well if nineteene could make a woman
to her minde: if Taylors were men indeed,
well furnished but with meer morall principles,
they would disdain to be led about like
Apes, by such mymick Marmosets. It is a
most unworthy thing, for men that have
bones in them, to spend their lives in
making fidle-cases for futilous womens phansies;
which are the very pettitoes of infirmity,
the gyblets of perquisquilian toyes. I
am so charitable to think, that most of that
mystery would worke the cheerfuller while
they live, if they might bee well discharged
of the tyring slavery of mis-tyring women:
it is no little labour to be continually putting
up English-women into Out-landish caskes:
who if they be not shifted anew, once in a
few moneths, grow too sowre for their Husbands.
themselves when God shall take measure
of Taylors consciences is beyond my skill to
imagine. There was a time when
Did set our State into a Damask plight.
But now our Roses are turned to Flore de
lices, our Carnations to Tulips, our Gilliflowers
to Dayzes, our City-Dames, to an
indenominable Quæmalry of overturcas'd
things. Hee that makes Coates for the
Moone, had need take measure every noone;
and he that makes for women, as often, to
keepe them from Lunacy.
I have often heard divers Ladies vent
loud feminine complaints of the wearisome
varieties and chargable changes of fashions:
I marvell themselves preferre not a Bill of
redresse. I would Essex Ladies would lead
the Chore, for the honour of their County
and persons; or rather the thrice honourable
Ladies of the Court, whom it best beseemes:
who may well presume of a Le Roy
le veult from our sober King, a Les Seigneurs
ont Assentus from our prudent Peers, and the
like Assentus from our considerate, I dare
not say wife-worne Commons: who I believe
had much rather passe one such Bill, than
pay so many Taylors Bills as they are forced
to doe.
Most deare and unparallel'd Ladies, be
pleased to attempt it: as you have the precellency
of the women of the world for
beauty and feature; so assume the honour
to give, and not take Law from any, in matter
of attire: if ye can transact so faire a
motion among yourselves unanimously, I
dare say, they that most renite, will least
repent. What greater honour can your
Honors desire, then to build a Promontory
president to all foraigne Ladies, to deserve
so eminently at the hands of all the English
Gentry present and to come: and to confute
the opinion of all the wise men in the
world; who never thought it possible for
women to doe so good a work?
If any man think I have spoken rather
merrily than seriously he is much mistaken,
I have written what I write with all the
indignation I can, and no more than I ought.
I confesse I veer'd my tongue to this kinde
of Language de industria though unwillingly,
supposing those I speak to are uncapable
of grave and rationall arguments.
I desire all Ladies and Gentlewomen to
understand that all this while I intend not
such as through necessary modesty to avoyd
morose singularity, follow fashions slowly, a
flight shot or two off, shewing by their moderation,
that they rather draw countermont
with their hearts, then put on by their
examples.
I point my pen only against the light
heel'd beagles that lead the chase so fast,
that they run all civility out of breath
against these Ape-headed pullets, which
invent Antique foole-fangles, meerly for
fashion and novelty sake.
In a word, if I begin once to declaime
against fashions, let men and women look
well about them, there is somewhat in the
businesse; I confesse to the world, I never
had grace enough to be strict in that kinde;
and of late years, I have found syrrope of
pride very wholesome in a due Dos, which
makes mee keep such a store of that drugge
by me, that if any body comes to me for a
question-full or two about fashions, they
never complain of me for giving them hard
measure, or under-weight.
But I addresse my selfe to those who can
both hear and mend all if they please: I
seriously feare, if the pious Parliament doe
not find a time to state fashions, as ancient
Parliaments have done in some part, God
will hardly finde a time to state Religion or
Peace: They are the surquedryes of pride,
the wantonnesse of idlenesse, provoking
sins, the certain prodormies of assured judgement,
Zeph. 1. 7, 8.
It is beyond all account, how many Gentlemens
and Citizens estates are deplumed
by their feather-headed wives, what usefull
supplies the pannage of England would
afford other Countries, what rich returnes to
it selfe, if it were not slic'd out into male
and female fripperies: and what a multitude
of misimploy'd hands, might be better
improv'd in some more manly Manufactures
for the publique weale: it is not easily credible,
of Taylors in London: I have heard an
honest man say, that not long since there
were numbered between Temple-barre and
Charing-Crosse, eight thousand of that
Trade: let it be conjectured by that proportion
how many there are in and about London,
and in all England, they will appeare
to be very numerous. If the Parliament
would please to mend women, which their
Husbands dare not doe, there need not so
many men to make and mend as there are.
I hope the present dolefull estate of the
Realme, will perswade more strongly to
some considerate course herein, than I now
can.
Knew I how to bring it in, I would speak
a word to long haire, whereof I will say no
more but this: if God proves not such a
Barbor to it as he threatens, unlesse it be
amended, Esa. 7. 20. before the Peace of
the State and Church be well setled, then
let my prophesie be scorned, as a sound
minde scornes the ryot of that sin, and more
it needs not. If those who are termed Rat
tle-heads and Impuritans, would take up a
Resolution to begin in moderation of haire,
to the just reproach of those that are called
Puritans and Round-heads, I would honour
their manlinesse, as much as the others godlinesse,
so long as I knew what man or
honour meant: if neither can find a Barbours
shop, let them turne in, to Psal. 68.
21. Jer. 7. 29. 1 Cor. 11. 14. if it be thought
no wisdome in men to distinguish themselves
in the field by the Scissers, let it bee
thought no injustice in God, not to distinguish
them by the Sword. I had rather God
should know me by my sobriety, than mine
enemy not know me by my vanity. He is
ill kept, that is kept by his owne sin. A
short promise is a farre safer guard than a
long lock: it is an ill distinction which God
is loth to looke at, and his Angels cannot
know his Saints by. Though it be not the
mark of the Beast, yet it may be the mark
of a beast prepared to slaughter. I am sure
men use not to weare such manes; I am
also sure Souldiers use to weare other marklets
or notadoes in time of battell.
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