been pronounced; no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom an Indian or an African sun may have burned upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery-the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of the chains that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of Universal Emancipation."

The question how far a speaker is to trust to improvisation, is one, of course, involved in the self-knowledge of the orator himself. Judging from the examples of eloquence which have been conserved, and traditional accounts of effects produced, it is evident that while the greatest speeches have been studiously prepared the greatest bursts have been improvised; a fact obvious indeed, and illustrated by the long line of orators from Demosthenes to Burke, from Chatham to Mirabeau.

There is, perhaps, no finer manifestation of the power of the human mind than that of an orator, launched unexpectedly on the ocean of improvisation, struggling onwards toward his object; extemporizing thought after thought; now apparently overwhelmed in a storm of interruption, yet rising stronger from opposition; now suddenly collecting his ideas in an interval of applause, battling with and conquering both himself and his audience, and mounting triumphantly billow after billow, until at last he reaches his desired goal together with his auditory.

To inform, to please, to excite the feelings, such, according to Cicero, are the three objects of the orator. But from this category he omits its ultimate end, persuasion-the power of convincing. The art of the highest eloquence may be said chiefly to consist in satisfying the understanding and reason, and exciting the imagination and passions, to persuade, and exalt, and impel. These essentials, also, he requires: knowledge of human nature, of himself, of his subject, and his audiences. He must be clear and attractive in his statements; lucid in the arrangement and sequence of his arguments; impassioned in his address to the passions, all whose springs and effects he has studied. An oration must have its lights and shades, its levels and heights, its harmonious intermixture of the clear and commonplace, the animated, the striking, and emotive-all tending to the special object in view, all effectively intermingled. Its or naments (chiefly adapted to the level por tions) must be introduced with chaste and consistent severity of taste, and have the appearance of following the subject with involuntary illustrative naturalness, rather than assuming an attractive prominence over it-such illuminations must illustrate, not divert. Speaking throughout with pre-considered prospective directness to the point, the orator must rise from the foundation of reason to sentiment, imagination, and passion, and must unite thought with emotion, and, so to speak, creating a storm with the passions of his own soul, hurry those of his audience along with him.

latitude. Frequently these ponderous crystals hide as much of their proportions below the water as they expose above it, and float, grinding the rocks of the sea bottom as they go, with a force that may perhaps be visible to the future geologists when they shall be exalted to the proud promontories of a new nameless continent. They carry large bowlders from the Arctic rocks and disperse them over the bed of the North-Atlantic, and for the whaler they bear rich provision of fresh water, of which he spoils them.

"THOU knowest," says Borachio, "that the fashion of a doublet, or a hat, or a cloak, is nothing to a man." Foolish Borachio! But then he had had no experience of "London Society;" and it is possible that in Messina he kept but indifferent company. Or are we to regard him as a supercilious cynic, who looked down upon such trifles as the set of a feather or the cut of a doublet, and busied himself with more important, if less innocent, matters? To such a conclusion his further utterances would seem to guide us. "Seest thou not," he inquires of his companion, contemptuously, "what a deformed thief this fashion is? How giddily he turns about all the hot-bloods between fourteen and five- and thirty? Sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh's soldiers in the reechy painting; sometime, like god Bel's priests in the old church windows; sometime, like the shaved Hercules in the smirched, wormeaten tapestry ?" It is true that the fashion, as Conrade sagely conjectures, wears out more apparel than the man; but it deserves to be dealt with in a wider spirit of philosophy than comported with the cynical mood of Borachio, and from its influence upon men, manners, and morals, is not unworthy of the attention of a Buckle or a Macaulay. The relation of a particular fashion to a particular state of society is very obvious, and we may trace the spirit of an age in the attire peculiar to it. Who can fancy a Raleigh, a Sidney, or an Essex in aught but doublets and hose, short cloaks, rapiers, ruffles, and plumed hats? How would a courtier, I beg leave to inquire, fling, with any degree of propriety, a paletôt or a llama to help a virgin queen across a plashy piece of ground? If Leicester had worn the Windsor uniform, do you believe it possible that he could have dazzled Amy Robsart with the splendor of his personal appearance? Or, in the same mysterious combination of the postman and the footman, would Robert Carr have

attracted the attention of James I. ? And if he had not, a murder or two, besides some other peccadilloes, would have been happily avoided. If no man was ever so wise as Lord Thurlow looked, how much of that wonderfully sagacions aspect was owing to his horse-hair wig? What would become of the Belinda of Pope's exquisite "Rape of the Lock" without her patches, powder, and hoops? And does not many a beauty whom history or art has made immortal owe much of her fame to her furbelows or highheeled bottines? The difference between a Phryne and a Traviata is, perhaps, a matter of fashion; and a Burleigh in a loose shooting-coat and striped trowsers would assuredly not be the much-pondering and often head-shaking counselor of Queen Elizabeth.

It is a question, I think, whether the fashion influences the age, or the age moulds and shapes the fashion; but it is obvious that there exists a subtle relationship between them. A high-bred courtesy, a certain elevation of manner, a loftiness of language, and even a refinement of thought, seem naturally to associate themselves with the rich and stately costume of the men of the sixteenth century. Look at the Cavaliers in the glorious pictures of Vandyck who can believe that from the lips of such be-ruffled and be-plumed gentlemen ever dropped any coarse ribaldry or vulgar slang? Those grave and potent seigniors who glow on the splendid canvas of Titian: can you believe them capable of the deeds in which delighted the buckskin breeches and, cocked-hats of our Macaronis and Mohawks in the days of the second George? When I look upon the sweet and noble women of Vandyck, and compare them with the bare-bosomed beauties of Lely, I trace in the distinction of costume and fashion the difference of morals and taste, and the wide gulf between the pure household life of the reign of Charles I. and the social abandonment of that of

Charles II. Morals and manners keep pace with the changes of costume, and are indicated by them. It is quite in accordance with the philosophy of fashion that the society which countenances "pretty horse-breakers," and disguises things vicious with pleasant periphrases of language, should distinguish itself by patronizing huge crinolined monstrosities contrived to expose, and yet encumber, the female figure. It may be that there was as much vice in the times of old, but it was a more decorous vice; and the Doll Tearsheet of Falstaff and his companions did not "set the fashion," to the wives of Percy and Mortimer.

A writer who proposed to himself to become the historian of fashion would soon find himself perplexed by the absence of all general laws, and the want of any definite divisions of his subject. There is nothing progressive in fashion on the contrary, its principal tendency is to repeat itself. And this is a necessary consequence of its assimilation_to_the tastes and passions of the time. In England, for instance, when the English public has one of what Sydney Smith called its "cold fits of morality," fashion becomes as severe as it was in the days of the Puritans. The robe décolleté is exchanged for the high and close-fitting "body," and the skirt descends in so ber decency over the well-turned ankle. When the French revolutionists ran mad about classic systems of government, and every ferocious Jacobin thought himself -with a strange confusion of ideas and a remarkable ignorance of history-a Gracchus or a Brutus, how classic became the costume of the Parisian Portias and the viri togati of the National Convention! It is a sign of the gradual wearing down of class distinctions-the cosmopolitan character of the dress of the present day. There is little enough, Heaven knows, as far as attire is concerned, to separate a nobleman whose veins are blue with the best azul sangre-the "blood of all the Howards"-from our Brown, Jones, or Robinson, who know not their greatgrandfathers! When I read of an innkeeper trusting a supposititious Lord John Russell with five shillings and a glass of gin and water, I am inclined to doubt whether the host of "The Tabard" or "The Boar's Head" could so easily have been beguiled by a false Earl of Essex. Dress no longer makes the man, nor

shows the man as he is. In the gorgeous chamber of the Peers the descendants of the Whigs of 1688, and the Tories who shouted for "Sacheverel and the Church," are scarcely to be distinguished from Tomkins, who occupies a stool in a banking-house in the city; or Simpkins, who measures ribbons over a counter in St. Paul's Churchyard. Even the clergy are yielding to the prevailing confusion of ideas, and-O shades of Barrow and Tillotson! - rejoice in wide-awakes and coats of most uncanonical cut.

In the days that were, a man might hope for immortality from his costume. If he could not be a Milton, a Shakspeare, or a Newton, he might at least have the satisfaction of descending to posterity as a Beau Brummell! There is no such cheap immortality to be earned now-a-days, unless the Empress Eugénie be remembered by the amplitude of her skirts and the peculiarities of her head-gear. In the old biographers you will meet with pages of elaborate description of the attire affected by their heroes; and some of our modern novelists, taking wide views of the philosophy of clothes, are equally precise in their pictorial sketches. But I should like to see a modern biographer attempt to interest his public with a sketch of the costume of any recent "celebrity." How much of the character and idiosyncrasies of a man can you identify with a Gibus hat, an Eureka shirt, a Melton paletôt, and a pair of the Sydenham trowsers?

If this era of cosmopolitan utilitarianism endures, what will become of the historical associations of dress? Who can reasonably expect that the pegtops or ponchos will ever make any remarkable figure in history? What will the present age hand down to the future in company with George Fox's suit of home-made leather- honest, sturdy leather-and Raleigh's much-worn cloak ?—with Oliver Cromwell's "plain cloth suit, which" (says Sir Philip Warwick) "seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor," and the "lack-luster stars" that pointed the deadly aim of Nelson's murderer? We seem to cherish a personal familiarity with Napoleon's gris redingote, with the short white cloak that was Wellington's dis tinctive insignia in battle, with the portentous ruff of Queen Elizabeth, the black velvet robe that clothed the fair form of Mary of Scotland on the day of her execution, and "the doublets quilted for stiletto