Between the days when Psyche blushed on the rose, and the age when Delamira bought her blushes at fifteen shillings the pot, there is a long period;—nature at one end, and hoop-petticoats at the other. The fashion of the latter had got so preposterous, that Mr. William Jingle, coachmaker and chairmaker of the Liberty of Westminster, invented for the service of the ladies “a round chair in the form of a lantern, six yards and a half in circumference, with a stool in the centre of it; the said vehicle being so contrived, as to receive the passenger, by opening in two in the middle, and closing mathematically, when she is seated.” Honest Jingle also “invented a coach for the reception of one lady only, who is to be let in at the top.” For these inventions he asked the patronage of that Censor of Great Britain, Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff,—and therefore it must be true. However, how wide the time between the blushes of Psyche and the era of hoops! Now it is something connected with costume, during this interval, and subsequent to it, that I am now about to speak. These words, between you and me, reader, have been as the fragments of airs, which in musical introductions give us an inkling of more fulness to come. I will only pause to add a sentiment from Cowper;—but that would really be worse than Joseph Surface. No, reader! I will fling in my sentiment at the end, and here invite you to consider a subject, whose title heads the following page. MAN, MANNERS, AND A STORY WITH A MORAL TO IT. “Les hommes font les lois, les femmes font les mœurs.”—DE SÉGUE. “L’homme est un animal!” said a French orator, by way of peroration to his first speech in the Chamber of Deputies; “Man is an animal!”—and there he stopped. He found his subject exhausted, and he sat down in confusion. Thereupon his own familiar friend arose, and suggested that it was desirable that the honourable gentleman’s speech should be printed, _with a portrait of the author_! The definition is, as far as it goes, a plagiarism from Plato. In the Apophthegmata of Diogenes Laertius, it is stated that Plato defined Man as an animal with two legs and without feathers. The definition having been generally approved of, Diogenes went into the school of the philosopher, carrying with him a cock, which he had stripped of his plumage. “Here,” said he, “is Plato’s man!” Plato saw that his definition needed improvement, and he added to it “with broad nails.” He might have further said, “and needing something in place of feathers.”