But, worse than that, this folly is an intellectual depletion.  This endless study of proprieties and etiquette, patterns and styles, is bedwarfing to the intellect.  I never knew a man or a woman of extreme fashion that knew much.  How belittling the study of the cut of a coat, or the tie of a cravat, or the wrinkle in a shoe, or the color of a ribbon!  How they are worried if something gets untied, or hangs awry, or is not nicely adjusted!  With a mind capable of measuring the height and depth of great subjects; able to unravel mysteries; to walk through the universe; to soar up into the infinity of God’s attributes,—­hovering perpetually over a new style of mantilla!  I have known men, reckless as to their character, and regardless of interests momentous and eternal, exasperated by the shape of a vest-button!

What is the matter with that woman—­wrought up into the agony of despair?  O, her muff is out of fashion!

Worse than all—­this folly is not satisfied until it has extirpated every moral sentiment, and blasted the soul.  A wardrobe is the rock upon which many a soul has been riven.  The excitement of a luxurious life has been the vortex that has swallowed up more souls than the Maelstrom off Norway ever devoured ships.  What room for elevating themes in a heart filled with the trivial and unreal?  Who can wonder that in this haste for sun-gilded bawbles and winged thistle-down, men should tumble into ruin?  The travellers to destruction are not all clothed in rags.  On that road chariot jostles against chariot; and behind steeds in harness golden-plated and glittering, they go down, coach and four, herald and postilion, racketing on the hot pavements of hell.  Clear the track!  Bazaars hang out their colors over the road; and trees of tropical fruitfulness overbranch the way.  No sound of woe disturbs the air; but all is light and song, and wine and gorgeousness.  The world comes out to greet the dazzling procession with Hurrah! and Hurrah!  But, suddenly, there is a halt and an outcry of dismay, and an overthrow worse than the Red Sea tumbling upon the Egyptians.  Shadow of grave-stones upon finest silk!  Wormwood squeezed into impearled goblets!  Death, with one cold breath, withering the leaves and freezing the fountains.

In the wild tumult of the last day—­the mountains falling, the heavens flying, the thrones uprising, the universe assembling; amid the boom of the last great thunder-peal, and under the crackling of a burning world—­what will become of the fop and the dandy?

He who is genuinely refined will be useful and happy.  There is no gate that a gentleman’s hand cannot open.  During his last sickness there will be a timid knock at the basement door by those who have come to see how he is.