no man has ventured to trace the distress and the ruin now impending over
the country, to the increasing disrespect and disuse of--pockets.

By way of approving our conjecture, let us contrast the garments of the
hour with those of England in the olden time--long ago, when boards smoked
and groaned under a load of good things in every man's house; when the
rich took care of the poor, and the poor took care of themselves; when
husband and wife married for love, and lived happily (though that must
have been very long ago indeed); the athletic yeoman proceeded to his
daily toil, enveloped in garments instinct with pockets. The ponderous
watch--the plethoric purse--the massive snuff-box--the dainty
tooth-pick--the grotesque handkerchief; all were accommodated and
cherished in the more ample recesses of his coat; while supplementary fobs
were endeared to him by their more seductive contents: _as_ ginger
lozenges, love-letters, and turnpike-tickets. Such were the days on which
we should reflect with regret; such were the men whom we should imitate
and revere. Had such a character as we have endeavoured feebly to sketch,
met an individual enveloped in a shapeless cylindrical tube of pale
Macintosh--impossible for taste--incapable of pockets--indefinite and
indefinable--we question whether he would have regarded him in the light
of a maniac, an incendiary, or a foreign spy--whether he would not have
handed him immediately over to the exterminators of the law, as a being
too depraved, too degraded for human sympathy. And yet--for our prolixity
warns us to conclude--and yet the festering contagion of this baneful
example is now-a-days hidden under the mask of fashion. FASHION! and has
it indeed come to this? Is fashion to trample on the best and finest
feelings of our nature? Is fashion to be permitted to invade us in our
green lanes, and our high roads, under our vines and our fig-trees,
without hindrance, and without pockets? For the sake of human nature, we
hope not--for the sake of our bleeding country, we hope not. No! "Take