But it was not the only coat exalted, like the serpent of old, to win insane worship from imbecile idolators. Gibbon smiles with warrantable contempt upon the Roman priests who, behind the altar, were preparing miracles wherewith to astound the people. A deeper contempt attaches to the several priests who compelled two poor honest tailors, or weavers rather, to produce the duplicate coats, without a seam, each warranted to have been worn by the Great Victim ere He passed to Calvary, and before each of which, as the only one genuine, thousands, ay millions, have flung themselves down in speechless ecstasy. There is _the_ one Holy Coat at Treves, and _the_ one Holy Coat at Moscow; and the priests at either place will tell you that there were never two. The Empress Helena discovered that of Treves, says the legend. A Shah of Persia made a present of the Moscow garment to the Czar. Its genuineness was warranted by a Russian archbishop, who declared that, in a church in Georgia, a golden box placed upon a column had long contained this coat, and that it was doubtless the seamless coat of our Lord. A Muscovite monk standing by clinched the lie, by adding, that when the soldiers cast lots for the possession of the coat, it fell to one who lived in Georgia, and that this was the identical garment. Really, when we think seriously of these things, we must not be too hard upon those who reverenced the coat of the Sybarite. To return to Alexander: he was the despair of all men who, desirous of following the fashion as he gave it, lacked means to realize the desire. He was to his generals, what very rich Hussar colonels are to the younger and poorer officers; or what Count D’Orsay used to be to the counter-dandies of the Metropolis. Ephippus lived in the time of Commodus; and in allusion to that Emperor, who used to dress himself as Hercules, and go out daily in his car with the hero’s club, like a gold-headed cane, between his legs, he says:—“Is it extraordinary that in our days Commodus does this, when Alexander, a pupil of Aristotle, did worse in the olden time?” Certainly, in the article of dress, the son of Philip was as different from the simplicity of his father, as the Prince Regent from George III. Not only did he wear the lion’s skin, and call himself Hercules, but, in private intercourse with his friends, he put on the winged cap and the ankle-pinions of Mercury. If I may say so without profanity, I would remark, that if Prince Albert were to walk through Kensington Gardens attired like David, with a sling and a stone in his hand to fling at the first fat gentleman he might encounter, he would not be committing a more unseemly act than Alexander was doing when he decked himself out to look like Mercury.