wished merely to be seen by those who were best qualified to
appreciate the splendour of his achievements. Shall not the painter
show his work in galleries, the poet flit down Paternoster Row? Of
rank, for its own sake, Mr. Brummell had no love. He patronised all
his patrons. Even to the Regent his attitude was always that of a
master in an art to one who is sincerely willing and anxious to learn
from him.

Indeed, English society is always ruled by a dandy, and the more
absolutely ruled the greater that dandy be. For dandyism, the perfect
flower of outward elegance, is the ideal it is always striving to
realise in its own rather incoherent way. But there is no reason why
dandyism should be confused, as it has been by nearly all writers,
with mere social life. Its contact with social life is, indeed, but
one of the accidents of an art. Its influence, like the scent of a
flower, is diffused unconsciously. It has its own aims and laws, and
knows none other. And the only person who ever fully acknowledged this
truth in aesthetics is, of all persons most unlikely, the author of
Sartor Resartus. That any one who dressed so very badly as did Thomas
Carlyle should have tried to construct a philosophy of clothes has
always seemed to me one of the most pathetic things in literature. He
in the Temple of Vestments! Why sought he to intrude, another Clodius,
upon those mysteries and light his pipe from those ardent censers?
What were his hobnails that they should mar the pavement of that
delicate Temple? Yet, for that he betrayed one secret rightly heard
there, will I pardon his sacrilege. `A dandy,' he cried through the
mask of Teufelsdro"ck, `is a clothes-wearing man, a man whose trade,
office, and existence consists in the wearing of clothes. Every
faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically
consecrated to this one object, the wearing of clothes wisely and