Yes,--a dandy is good for something as such; and dandies such as I
was just speaking of have rocked this planet like a cradle,--aye,
and left it swinging to this day.--Still, if I were you, I wouldn't
go to the tailor's, on the strength of these remarks, and run up a
long bill which will render pockets a superfluity in your next
suit. Elegans "nascitur, non fit." A man is born a dandy, as he
is born a poet. There are heads that can't wear hats; there are
necks that can't fit cravats; there are jaws that can't fill out
collars--(Willis touched this last point in one of his earlier
ambrotypes, if I remember rightly); there are tournures nothing can
humanize, and movements nothing can subdue to the gracious suavity
or elegant languor or stately serenity which belong to different
styles of dandyism.
We are forming an aristocracy, as you may observe, in this
country,--not a gratia-Dei, nor a juredivino one,--but a de-facto
upper stratum of being, which floats over the turbid waves of
common life like the iridescent film you may have seen spreading
over the water about our wharves,--very splendid, though its origin
may have been tar, tallow, train-oil, or other such unctuous
commodities. I say, then, we are forming an aristocracy; and,
transitory as its individual life often is, it maintains itself
tolerably, as a whole. Of course, money is its corner-stone.
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