_Of Buttons_.--In these days of innovation--when Brummagem button-makers
affect a taste and elaboration of design--a true gentleman should be most
careful in the selection of this _dulce et utile_ contrivance. Buttons
which resemble gilt acidulated drops, or ratafia cakes, or those which are
illustrative of the national emblems--the rose, shamrock, and thistle tied
together like a bunch of faded watercresses, or those which are
commemorative of coronations, royal marriages, births, and christenings,
chartist liberations, the success of liberal measures, and such like
occasions, or those which would serve for vignettes for the _Sporting
Magazine_, or those which at a distance bear some resemblance to the royal
arms, but which, upon closer inspection, prove to be bunches of endive,
surmounted by a crown which the Herald's College does not recognise, or
those which have certain letters upon them, as the initials of clubs which
are never heard of in St. James's, as the U.S.C.--the Universal Shopmen's
Club; T.Y.C.--the Young Tailors' Club; L.S.D.--the Linen Drapers'
Society--and the like. All these are to be fashionably eschewed. The
regimental, the various hunts, the yacht clubs, and the basket pattern,
are the only buttons of Birmingham birth which can be allowed to associate
with the button-holes of a gentleman.

The restrictions on silk buttons are confined chiefly to magnitude. They
must not be so large as an opera ticket, nor so small as a silver penny.

_Of Braids_.--This ornament, when worn in the street, is patronised
exclusively by Polish refugees, theatrical Jews, opera-dancers, and
boarding-house fortune-hunters.

_Of Mustachios_.--The mustachio depends for its effect entirely upon its
adaptation to the expression of the features of the wearer. The small, or
_moustache à la chinoise_, should only appear in conjunction with Tussaud,