Any intermediate style is perfectly
inadmissible; for who above the grade of an attorney would wear a coat
with pockets inserted in the tails, like salt-boxes; or any but an
incipient Esculapius indulge in trousers that evinced a morbid ambition to
become knee-breeches, and were only restrained in their aspirations by a
pair of most strenuous straps. We will now proceed to details.
_The dressing-gown_ should be cut only--for the arm holes; but be careful
that the quantity of material be very ample--say four times as much as is
positively necessary, for nothing is so characteristic of a perfect
gentleman as his improvidence. This garment must be constructed without
buttons or button-holes, and confined at the waist with cable-like
bell-ropes and tassels. This elegant _deshabille_ had its origin (like the
Corinthian capital from the Acanthus) in accident. A set of massive
window-curtains having been carelessly thrown over a lay figure, or
tailor's _torso_, in Nugee's _studio_, in St. James's-street, suggested to
the luxuriant mind of the Adonisian D'Orsay, this beautiful combination of
costume and upholstery. The eighteen-shilling chintz great-coats, so
ostentatiously put forward by nefarious tradesmen as dressing-gowns, and
which resemble pattern-cards of the vegetable kingdom, are unworthy the
notice of all gentlemen--of course excepting those who are so by act of
Parliament. Although it is generally imagined that the coat is the
principal article of dress, _we_ attach far greater importance to the
trousers, the cut of which should, in the first place, be regulated by
nature's cut of the leg.
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