The dressing-gown should be cut only—­for the arm holes; but be careful that the quantity of material be very ample—­say four times as much as is positively necessary, for nothing is so characteristic of a perfect gentleman as his improvidence.  This garment must be constructed without buttons or button-holes, and confined at the waist with cable-like bell-ropes and tassels.  This elegant deshabille had its origin (like the Corinthian capital from the Acanthus) in accident.  A set of massive window-curtains having been carelessly thrown over a lay figure, or tailor’s torso, in Nugee’s studio, in St. James’s-street, suggested to the luxuriant mind of the Adonisian D’Orsay, this beautiful combination of costume and upholstery.  The eighteen-shilling chintz great-coats, so ostentatiously put forward by nefarious tradesmen as dressing-gowns, and which resemble pattern-cards of the vegetable kingdom, are unworthy the notice of all gentlemen—­of course excepting those who are so by act of Parliament.  Although it is generally imagined that the coat is the principal article of dress, we attach far greater importance to the trousers, the cut of which should, in the first place, be regulated by nature’s cut of the leg.  A gentleman who labours under either a convex or a concave leg, cannot be too particular in the arrangement of the strap-draught.  By this we mean that a concave leg must have the pull on the convex side, and vice versa, the garment being made full, the effects of bad nursing are, by these means, effectually “repealed."[2] This will be better understood if the reader will describe a parallelogram, and draw therein the arc of a circle equal to that described by his leg, whether knock-kneed or bandy.

    [2] Baylis.

If the leg be perfectly straight, then the principal peculiarity of cut to be attended to, is the external assurance that the trousers cannot be removed from the body without the assistance of a valet.

The other considerations should be their applicability to the promenade or the equestriade.  We are indebted to our friend Beau Reynolds for this original idea and it is upon the plan formerly adopted by him that we now proceed to advise as to the maintenance of the distinctions.

Let your schneider baste the trousers together, and when you have put them on, let them be braced to their natural tension; the schneider should then, with a small pair of scissors, cut out all the wrinkles which offend the eye.  The garment, being removed from your person, is again taken to the tailor’s laboratory, and the embrasures carefully and artistically fine-drawn.  The process for walking or riding trousers only varies in these particulars—­for the one you should stand upright, for the other you should straddle the back of a chair.  Trousers cut on these principles entail only two inconveniences, to which every one with the true feelings of a gentleman would willingly submit.  You must never attempt to sit down in your walking trousers, or venture to assume an upright position in your equestrians, for compound fractures in the region of the os sacrum, or dislocations about the genu patellae are certain to be the results of such rashness, and then