It being a sort of fundamental maxim with them, that superiority consists in dissimilitude, they become engaged in a perpetual competition with the world at large, and to a certain degree with each other. In order to maintain this struggle for pre-eminence, they are compelled to vary the modes and materials of their dress in all the ways which a fanciful imagination can suggest. It happens, through some strange infatuation, that those who affect to despise the man or woman of Fashion, yet ape their dress and air with the most impertinent and vexatious perseverance. What is to be done in this case?—Similitude is not to be endured. In order therefore to throw out their pursuers, these monopolizers of the mode are compelled to run into such eccentricities, as nothing could justify or palliate, but the distress to which they are reduced. If, for example, short skirts and low capes are copied by the herd of imitators, the Fashionables seek their remedy in the opposite extreme; their skirts are drawn down to the calves of their legs, and their capes pulled over their ears with as much solemnity and dispatch, as if their existence depended upon the measure. So if full petticoats and high kerchiefs are adopted by the misses of the crowd, the dressing-chambers of Fashion are all bustle and confusion:—the limbs are stripped, and the bosom laid bare, though the east wind may be blowing at the time; and coughs, rheumatisms, and consumptions, be upon the wings of every blast. This rage for dissimilitude in the affairs of the _wardrobe_, is allowed an indefinite scope. Unfortunately, as far as I can learn, there are no determinate points, beyond which it would be esteemed indecent or imprudent to indulge it. The consequence is, that the _groom_ and the _gentleman_ may be often mistaken for each other; and he who is recognised to-day as a _man of Fashion_, may to-morrow be confounded with _one of the people_.