inch a king in the sober dignity of a dress-coat. The waistcoat
imparted an air of pensive melancholy that mightily became the Prime
Minister, whilst the Lord Chamberlain, as he skipped to and fro in his
white gloves, looked a courtier indeed. The trousers had become the
subject of an unfortunate dispute, in the course of which they had
sustained such injuries as to be hardly recognisable. The captain was
convulsed with laughter.

But, in truth, the mental toilet of most of us is as defective and
almost as risible as was that of this savage Court. We take on our
opinions without paying heed to conclusions, and the result is absurd.
Better be without any opinions at all. A naked savage is not
necessarily an undignified object; but a savage in a dress-coat and
nothing else is, and must ever remain, a mockery and a show. There is
a great relativity about a dress-suit. In the language of the
logicians, the name of each article not only denotes that particular,
but connotes all the rest. Hence it came about that that which, when
worn in its entirety, is so dull and decorous, became so provocative
of Homeric laughter when distributed amongst several wearers.

No person with the least tincture of taste can ever weary of Dr.
Newman, and no apology is therefore offered for another quotation from
his pages. In his story, 'Loss and Gain,' he makes one of his
characters, who has just become a Catholic, thus refer to the stock
Anglican Divines, a class of writers who are, at all events, immensely
superior to the Ellicotts and Farrars of these latter days: 'I am
embracing that creed which upholds the divinity of tradition with
Laud, consent of Fathers with Beveridge, a visible Church with
Bramhall, dogma with Bull, the authority of the Pope with Thorndyke,
penance with Taylor, prayers for the dead with Ussher, celibacy,