There is very good philosophy in the story of Nessus and his tunic. We all know how the story is told in history, and that it therefore cannot be true. Apollodorus and Pausanias, Diodorus, Ovid, and Seneca, have all told the same tale, without guessing at the truth which lies hid in it. It is to this effect:—When Hercules was on his way to the court of Ceyx, king of Trachinia, in company with his “lady,” Dejanira, the travellers came to the swollen river of Evenus. Nessus, the centaur, politely carried the lady over, and became very rude to her on the opposite bank. The stalwart husband, from the other shore, observing what was going on, sent one of his shafts, dipped in the poison of the Lernæan Hydra, right into the centaur’s heart. Nessus, while dying, presented his shirt,—that is, his tunic,—to Dejanira, informing her that if she could persuade Hercules to wear it, he would never behave to her otherwise than as a gentleman. Now, as he never had yet so comported himself—for he was a dreadful bully—Dejanira accepted the gift; and, as the hero was soon after found flirting with his old love Iole, and was vain of his appearance, she sent the gay garment to him, and he had no sooner donned it than death clasped him, and the hero was transferred to where there were so many other powerful rascals,—the halls of Olympus. So much for fiction, and those never-to-be-trusted poets. Here is the truth. Nessus was a ridiculous old dandy, with a juvenile wig and reprobate principles. He courted Hercules’ “lady,” and so flattered her that she became fonder than ever of fashionable garments, and even accepted a shawl from the centaur, who had ordered it in the name of the husband, and left him to pay for it. Hercules forgot his vexation in the _beaux yeux_ of Iole; and remembering how the “old beast,” as he used to call the centaur, had contrived to sun himself in Dejanira’s eyes, he adopted the fashion of Nessus; and, lightly as nymphs were dressed in the days of Iole, he ran up a right royal bill at the milliner’s, and no more thought of what he should have to pay than the Duke of York, when ordering cashmeres for Anna Maria Clarke. The fall of the year however came, and therewith the “little account,” with an intimation that a speedy settlement would oblige. Hercules, hero as he was, felt his heart fail him as he looked at “the tottle of the whole,” and he fell into such extravagances that, being hunted to death by bailiffs, and his honesty as small as that of the proprietor of an ultra-pietist paper who cheats his editor, he took the benefit of the act, and retired to the country, where he kept a shabby chariot, drawn by only two mangy leopards, and ultimately died, like other heroes, bewailing his amiable weaknesses. But let us go further back than to mythology, in order to examine the origin of dress.