such a garment.

Can you not make the application to the case, very likely to happen,
of some disfigurement of that exquisite toilette of Aurelia's? In
going down stairs, for instance, why should not heavy old Mr
Carbuncle, who is coming close behind with Mrs. Peony, both very
eager for dinner, tread upon the hem of that garment which my lips
would grow pale to kiss? The august Aurelia, yielding to natural laws,
would be drawn suddenly backward--a very undignified movement--and the
dress would be dilapidated. There would be apologies, and smiles, and
forgiveness, and pinning up the pieces, nor would there be the
faintest feeling of awkwardness or vexation in Aurelia's mind. But to
you, looking on, and, beneath all that pure show of waistcoat, cursing
old Carbuncle's carelessness, this tearing of dresses and repair of
the toilette is by no means a poetic and cheerful spectacle. Nay, the
very impatience that it produces in your mind jars upon the harmony of
the moment.

You will respond, with proper scorn, that you are not so absurdly
fastidious as to heed the little necessary drawbacks of social
meetings, and that you have not much regard for "the harmony of the
occasion" (which phrase I fear you will repeat in a sneering
tone). You will do very right in saying this; and it is a remark to
which I shall give all the hospitality of my mind, and I do so because
I heartily coincide in it. I hold a man to be very foolish who will
not eat a good dinner because the table-cloth is not clean, or who
cavils at the spots upon the sun. But still a man who does not apply
his eye to a telescope or some kind of prepared medium, does not see
those spots, while he has just as much light and heat as he who does.