EXTRACTS.

TELHANI ON DRESS.

" IAM wearied of speaking of tailors ; let us reflect a little upon their works. In the lirst place, I deem it the supreme excellence of coats, not to be too well made, they should have nothing of the triangle about them ; at the same time, wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided ; the coat should fit exactly, though without efihrt ; I hold it as a decisive opinion, that this can never be the case where any padding (beyond one thin sheet of buckram, placed smoothly under the shoulders, and sloping gradually away towards the chest) is admitted. The collar is a very important point, to which too much attention cannot be given. I think. I would ley down as a general rule (of course dependant on the mode), that it should be rather low be • hind, broad, short, and slightly rolled. The tail of the coat must, on no account, be broad or square, unless the figure be much too thin ;--no licence of fashion can allow a man of delicate taste to adopt, and imitate the posterial luxuriance of a Hottentot. On the contrary, I would lean to the other

extreme, and think myself safe in a swallow-tail; with respect to the length allotted to the waist, I can give no better rule than always to adopt that proportion granted us by nature. The gigot sleeve is an abominable fashion;

any tight across the wrist is ungraceful to the last degree ; moreover, such tightness does not suffer the wristband to lie smooth and unwrinkled, and

has the effect of giving a large and clumsy appearance to the hand. Speak ing of the hand, I would observe, that it should never be utterly ringless, hut whatever ornament of that description it does wear, should be distinguished by a remarkable fastidiousness of taste. I know nothing in which the good sense of a gentleman is more finely developed than in his rings; for my part, I carefully eschew all mounting rings, all hoops of embossed gold, all diamonds and very precious stones, and all antiques, unless they are peculiarly fine. One may never be ashamed of a seal ring, nor of a very plain gold one, like that worn by married women; rings should in general be simple ; but singular, and bear the resemblance of a gage d'amour. One should never be supposed to buy a ring, unless it is a seal one—pardon the digression. One word now for the waistcoat : this, though apparently the least observable

article in dress, is one which influences the whole appearance more than any one not profoundly versed in the habiliatory art would suppose. Besides, it is the only main portion of our attire in which we have full opportunity for the display of a graceful and well-cultivated taste. Of an evening, I am by no means averse to a very rich and ornate species of vest ; but the extremest can tion is necessary in the selection of the spot, the stripe or the sprig,which forms the principal decoration—nothing tawdry, nothing common must be permitted; if you wear a fine waistcoat and see another person with one resembling it, forthwith bestow it upon your valet. A white waistcoat, with a black coat and trowsers, and a small chain of dead gold, only partially seeh, is never within the bann of the learned in such matters ; but he aware, oh, be aware yout linen, your neckcloth, your collar, your frill, on the day in which you are tempted to the decent perpetration of a white waistcoat ; all things depend upon their arrangement ; in a black waistcoat the sins of a tie or the soils of a shirt bosom escape detection ; with a white one there is no hope : if . therefore, you are hurried in your toilette, or in a misanthropic humour at the moment of setting your cravat, let no inducement suffer you to wear a vesture, which, were all else suitable, would be the most unexceptionable you could assume. Times, by the bye, are greatly changed since Brurnmell interdicted white waistcoats of a morning. I do not know whether, during the heat of the season, you could induct yourself in a more genteel anti courtly garment. The dress waistcoat should generally possess a rolling and open form giving the fullest opening for the display of the shirt, which cannot be too curiously fine ; if a frill is exquisitely washed, it is the most polished form in which your bosom appurtenances should be moulded ; if not—if, indeed, your own valet, or your mistress does not superintend their lavations, I would advise a simple plait of the plainest fashion. Fourth, with regard to the trowsers, be sure that you have them exceedingly tight across the hips. If you are well-made, you may then leave their further disposition to Providence, until they reach the ankle. There you must pause and consider well whether you will have them short, so as to develope the fineness of the has de sole, or whether you will continue them so as to kiss your very shoe-tie ; in the latter form, which is indisputably the most graceful, you must be especially careful that they flow down, as it were, in an easy and loose (but not at all baggy) fall, and that the shoe-strings are arranged in the dernier facon of a bow and end. Of a morning, the trowsers cannot be to long or too easy, so that they avoid every outré and singular excess. As to the choice of colours in clothing, it is scarcely possible to fix any certain or definite rule. Among all persons there should be little variety of colour either in the morning or evening ; but fair people with good complexions may, if their port and bearing be genuinely aristocratic, wear light or showy colours—a taste cautiously to be shimmied by the dark, the pale, the meagre, and the suburban in inein."—Pelham.

THE MODERN GENTLEMAN'S EDUCATION.

"I was in the head class when I left Eton. As I was reckoned an uncom monly well educated boy, it may not be ungratifying to the admirers of education to pause here for a moment, and recal what I then knew. I could make twenty Latin verses in half an hour ; I could construe, without an English translation, all the easy Latin authors, and many of the difficult ones, with it: I could read Greek fluently, and even translate it through the medium of a Latin version at time bottom of the page. I was thought exceedingly clever, for I had only been eight years in acquiring all this fund of information, which, as one can never recal it in the world, you have every right to suppose that Iliad entirely forgotten before I was five-and-twenty. As I was never taught a syllable of English during this period; as when I once attempted to read Pope's poems, out of school hours, I was laughed at, and called "a SO;' as my mother, when I went to school, renounced her own instructions ; and as, whatever school-masters may think to the contrary, one learns nothing now-a-days by inspiration ; so of everything which relates to English literature, English laws, and English history (with the exception of the said story of Queen Elizabeth and Lord Essex), you have the same right to suppose that I was, at time age of eighteen, when I left Eton, in the profoundest ignorance. "At this age I was transplanted to Cambridge, where I bloomed for two years in the blue and silver of a fellow commoner of Trinity. At the end of that time (being of royal descent), I became entitled to an honorary degree. I suppose the term is in contradistinction to an honourable degree, which is obtained by pale men in spectacles and cotton stockings, after thirty-six months of intense application. "I do not exactly remember how I spent my time at Cambridge. I had a piano-forte in my room, and a private billiard-room at a village two miles oil; and between these two resources, I managed to improve my mind more than could reasonably have been expected. To say the truth, the whole place reeked with vulgarity. The men drank beer by the gallon, and eat cheese by the hundred weight—wore jockey-cut coats, and talked slang— rode for wagers, and swore when they lost—smoked in your face, and expectorated on the floor. Their proudest glory was to drive the mail—their mightiest exploit to box with the coachman—their most delicate amour to leer at the barmaid.

"It will be believed that I felt little regret in quitting companions of this description. I went to take leave of our college tutor. 'Mr. Pelham,' said he, affectionately squeezing me by the hand, your conduct has been most exemplary ; you have not walked wantonly over the college grass-plats, nor set your dog at the proctor,—nor driven tandems by day, nor broken lamps by night—nor entered the chapel in order to display your intoxication—nor the lecture-room, in order to caricature the professors. This is the general behaviour of young men of family and fortune ; but it has not been your's, Sir, you have been an honour to your college.' 4' Thus closed my academical career. He who does not allow that it passed creditably to my teachers, profitably to myself, and beneficially to the world, is a narrow-minded and illiterate man, who knows nothing of the advantages of modern education."—Pe/ham.

CHAPEL AT CAMBRIDGE.

g; We are very pious indeed here : poor deluded sinners think if they go twice a week to church, and offer up their prayers in the simplicity of their hearts, they have done enough, as far as public devotion is concerned. What a fatal error !—eight times a week is considered not at all too little here, and in some Colleges more is insisted on. It must produce a marked effect on your conduct and demeanour:—It does produce a marked effect, and you may mark it through life, if you please. It produces listlessness and indifference, and it stifles true piety. To be plain with you, attendance at chapel is made much more a point of discipline than a point of duty ; mean religious duty. In some of the Colleges ten times, mothers eight, and in none, I believe, fewer than five a \seek are required from all undergraduates : this is a very severe, and a 'very impolitic rule* also. Is a true pereeption of the efficacy of prayer likely to be given in a compulsory abuse of its purposes ? Will the " beauty of holiness" strike the mind so forcibly on hearing men who, if they presented themselves on an earthly stage, and thus mutilated the language of earthly minds, would be driven with hisses Irons that stage ;—on hearing, I say, these men presumptuously profane the language of heaven ? What is the excuse ? what is the plea urged ?--' 0, it is necessary to have some yind of muster-roll.' And so the priests of God will hang the muster-roll on the high • altar, will they ? The formal Pharisee could do no more. If a muster-roll be so necessary, why not make it at Hall ? The restrictions imposed on the.porters of Colleges, and on licensed lodging-house keepers, would form an adequate support to this, if any apprehensions were entertained of the misapplication of the intervening time. This is bad enough ; but there is worse to come, and come it shall. Put it to the serious-minded man, and ask him what he would think, were he to be told, that not merely the regular services are so abused, but that the most awful ceremony of the Christian church, no less than the Sacrament itself, is treated in many of these establishments (some I except) with equal levity and contempt ? Whenever celebration of it is enjoined, you must attend : no scruples of conscience are admissable ; no sense of unworthiness can be pleaded. If you have just risen from a debauch, your senses steeped in wine, your better feelings unawakened to a sense of duty—well :—if the bread untouched, and the tremendous cup untasted, you return to the carousal you have quitted—no matter :—an imperious necessity commands, and you hope (and I trust not in vain) the shame, and the guiltiness of the deed, will rest on their heads who dragged you to it. I have said I except some : these are Trinity, Catherine Hall, and St. Johns : there may be more : I shall be happy to be corrected. I du not recollect any at present. Trinityt has sacrament administered on a week day ; St. Johns, I believe, the same ; Catherine Hall exacts strict attendance to chapel on Sunday (this no person will object to), except it he Sacrament Sunday ; then it is optional to go or not. Bachelors though nominally in state pupillari, are scarcely considered actually so, and therefore enjoyan exemption in general ; still it is expected of them to appear once or twice in the week at chapel ; at Trinity rather oftener ; indeed, in the fierce times of Bentley and his imitators, this notion of disciplume has been known to have been carried so far, as to cause a withholding of certain monies due to the scholars in residence, and many complaints thereupon, and not a few suspicions.

"I will suppose you now an undergraduate, very pious withal, yet a little restive under so galling a discipline. You will drop off by degrees ; just go seven times instead of eight, and then six instead of seven, and so on. The first sin the dean commonly winks at ; on a repetition, he sends for you, discourses half an hour, perhaps about the College* (you, the while, twirling your cap strings); and sends you away with a gentle reprimand : again offending, he waxes warmer, talks of convening you before the master and senior fellows ; puts a few leading questions about your particular tenets ; and ends, I should not wonder, with giving you an imposition. You will ask, I dare say, what an imposition is. In the ordinary sense, it conveys the idea of deception, and the person who imposes on you the imposition is termed an impostor. It has no such ill meaning here: it denotes simply a task : thus, if for your misdeeds you are required to write out a book of Euclid, that is an imposition ; if you have three hundred lines to say by heart out of Homer or Virgil, that is an imposition ; if you have to translate a page of time Spectator into such Latin as your invention or imagination suggests to you, that is an

imposition Very childish all this.'—Nonsense; you do not understand it; it is not all childish. We have in this place students of all ages. Jnst fancy now the dean or task-master, whoever he may be, enthroned in an elbow-chair, his trencher on for effect, perhaps, and before him standing a venerable criminal, with thin spare locks, or a flaxen wig, blundering out arma virumque cano,' his teeth chattering with fear, his hand shaking with Palsy ;—awful scene this !--what respect, what reverence does it not inspire one with ? People insist so loudly on the -wisdom of our ancestors ; our own wisdom is much more perfect :—what did our ancestors ? They, simple souls, made light and slender bands to confine the wild spirits of their youth, and fetter their lawless freedom. Whereas we, with a rare dexterity, have fitted the same bands on manhood, stretched, too, and rendered weaker by the effort. And more than that, we have gravely told manhood-0 ! brave impudence !--these bands are of the strongest iron. Our ancestors foresaw your necessities, and they have thus provided for them ; and it has believed the lie. One effort would break them asunder. We say, Move not ; be quiet and obedient ; and manhood is so. That's very fine : be so good as to translate it into English for me, if you please.'—Well, then, in English, I think these impositions with you very childish indeed.: the idea of making men grown up repeat from memory a mass of Greek and Latin, is most absurd. A pecuniary fine would answer all purposes, and produce, I have * " The rule varies a little according to seniority the freshman is expected to go oftener than the junior soph, the junior sopli than the senior, and the senior than the ouestionist. The last October term before a man takes his degree he is called questionist.—EDITOR."

1"Persons of any religious persuasion can receive the education of the place at Trinity ; Catholic, Calvinist, Methodist or what not. So feeble, it is said, is the 'No Popery' cry there, that the abstemious devotee can even have tith on fastdays.—Eorroa."

* "The College :—a most mysterious personage ; often talked of, often heard of, but

never seen ; for whether the being is he or she I can't tell. Must be very devout ; for College requires all to attend chapel. It must be a great admirer of learning; for the College makes every one go to lectures. It certainly is not a member of the Jockey Club ; for the College forbids races. It must be a little whimsical I fancy, and not a tittle captious; for, whenever a bad man is put into a fellowship, and a good man kept out, it is always the College does the mischief.—Eomou." no question, a much greater regularity. The plan pursued, at present, inflicts a twofold misery on tutor and on student. The one listens with as much impatience to what he is compelled to hear, as the other delivers what he has been forced to learn. Complaints have been repeatedly made, and continue to be made, hitherto without effect ; but the powers that be cannot resist public feeling, when public feeling becomes plain and unequivocal ; so, I trust a change will take place ere long."—Letters from Cambridge.