We have another portion of dress whose origin dates from a serious personage and from eventful times. I allude to that terror of gentlemen who do not possess that which frogs and properly-built men alone possess in common,—namely, calves;—I allude, I say, to “pantaloons.” This tight-fitting garment was once part of the official costume of the great standard-bearer of the Venetian Republic. He carried on his banner the Lion of St. Mark, and he was the _Piantaleone_, or Planter of the Lion, around whose glorious flag and tightly-encased legs the battle ever raged with greatest fury, and where victory was most hotly contended for. The tight parti-coloured legs of the tall Piantaleone were the rallying points of the Venetians. Where _his_ thighs were upright, the banner was sure to be floating in defiance or triumph over them; and Venice may be said to have stood upon the legs of her Pantaloons. He who once saved states was subsequently represented as the most thoroughly battered imbecile of a pantomime. But therein was a political revenge. Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine represented different states of Italy, whose delight it was to pillory Venice by beating her nightly under the guise of the old buffoon “Signor Pantaloon.” The dress has survived the memory of this fact, though the dress too is almost obsolete. In the last paragraph there is the phrase “I say” interpolated, the use of which reminds me of a tailor-like comment made upon it. Erskine writing to Boswell, or Boswell to Erskine, I forget now which, remarks that “a sentence so clumsily worded as to require an ‘I say’ to keep it together, very much resembles, in my candid opinion, a pair of ill-mended breeches.”