If PUNCH has dealt hardly with these gentlemen, it is because he will bear “no brother near the throne” of humbug and quackery.  Like a steward who tricks his master, but keeps the rest of the servants honest, PUNCH will gammon the public to the utmost of his skill, but he will take care that no one else shall exercise a trade of which he claims by prescription the entire monopoly.

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PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 1.

FOR THE WEEK ENDING SEPTEMBER 5, 1841.

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THE GENTLEMAN’S OWN BOOK.

[Illustration:  O]Our consideration must now be given to those essentials in the construction of a true gentleman—­the cut, ornaments, and pathology of his dress.

THE CUT

is to the garment what the royal head and arms are to the coin—­the insignia that give it currency.  No matter what the material, gold or copper, Saxony or sackcloth, the die imparts a value to the one, and the shears to the other.

Ancient Greece still lives in its marble demi-gods; the vivifying chisel of Phidias was thought worthy to typify the sublimity of Jupiter; the master-hand of Canova wrought the Parian block into the semblance of the sea-born goddess, giving to insensate stone the warmth and etheriality of the Paphian paragon; and Stultz, with his grace-bestowing shears, has fashioned West of England broad-cloths, and fancy goods, into all the nobility and gentility of the “Blue Book,” the “Court Guide,” the “Army, Navy, and Law Lists, for 1841.”

Wondrous and kindred arts!  The sculptor wrests the rugged block from the rocky ribs of his mother earth;—­the tailor clips the implicated “long hogs"[1] from the prolific backs of the living mutton;—­the toothless saw, plied by an unweayring hand, prepares the stubborn mass for the chisel’s tracery;—­the loom, animated by steam (that gigantic child of Wallsend and water), twists and twines the unctuous and pliant fleece into the silky Saxony.

    [1] The first growth of wool.

The sculptor, seated in his studio, throws loose the reins of his imagination, and, conjuring up some perfect ideality, seeks to impress the beautiful illusion on the rude and undigested mass before him.  The tailor spreads out, upon his ample board, the happy broadcloth; his eyes scan the “measured proportions of his client,” and, with mystic power, guides the obedient pipe-clay into the graceful diagram of a perfect gentleman.  The sculptor, with all the patient perseverance of genius, conscious of the greatness of its object, chips, and chips, and chips, from day to day; and as the stone quickens at each touch, he glows with all the pride of the creative Prometheus, mingled with the gentler ecstacies