and ruffled worthy as used to swagger by dozens up and down Paul's
Walk, not knowing how to get a dinner, much less to pay his tailor,
should look on him as firstly a fool, and secondly a swindler: while
if we met an old Puritan, we should consider him a man gracefully and
picturesquely drest, but withal in the most perfect sobriety of good
taste; and when we discovered (as we probably should), over and
above, that the harlequin cavalier had a box of salve and a pair of
dice in one pocket, a pack of cards and a few pawnbroker's duplicates
in the other; that his thoughts were altogether of citizens' wives
and their too easy virtue; and that he could not open his mouth
without a dozen oaths: then we should consider the Puritan (even
though he did quote Scripture somewhat through his nose) as the
gentleman; and the courtier as a most offensive specimen of the 'snob
triumphant,' glorying in his shame. The picture is not ours, nor
even the Puritan's. It is Bishop Hall's, Bishop Earle's, it is
Beaumont's, Fletcher's, Jonson's, Shakspeare's,--the picture which
every dramatist, as well as satirist, has drawn of the 'gallant' of
the seventeenth century. No one can read those writers honestly
without seeing that the Puritan, and not the Cavalier conception of
what a British gentleman should be, is the one accepted by the whole
nation at this day.

In applying the same canon to the dress of women they were wrong. As
in other matters, they had hold of one pole of a double truth, and
erred in applying it exclusively to all cases. But there are two
things to be said for them; first, that the dress of that day was
palpably an incentive to the profligacy of that day, and therefore
had to be protested against; while in these more moral times
ornaments and fashions may be harmlessly used which then could not be
used without harm. Next, it is undeniable that sober dressing is