Your dress should always be consistent with your age and your natural exterior.  That which looks outr, on one man, will be agreeable on another.  As success in this respect depends almost entirely upon particular circumstances and personal peculiarities, it is impossible to give general directions of much importance.  We can only point out the field for study and research; it belongs to each one’s own genius and industry to deduce the results.  However ugly you may be, rest assured that there is some style of habiliment which will make you passable.

If, for example, you have a stain upon your cheek which rivals in brilliancy the best Chateau-Margout; or, are afflicted with a nose whose lustre dims the ruby, you may employ such hues of dress, that the eye, instead of being shocked by the strangeness of the defect, will be charmed by the graceful harmony of the colours.  Every one cannot indeed be an Adonis, but it is his own fault if he is an Esop.

If you have bad, squinting eyes, which have lost their lashes and are bordered with red, you should wear spectacles.  If the defect be great, your glasses should be coloured.  In such cases emulate the sky rather than the sea:  green spectacles are an abomination, fitted only for students in divinity,—­ blue ones are respectable and even distingue.

Almost every defect of face may be concealed by a judicious use and arrangement of hair.  Take care, however, that your hair be not of one colour and your whiskers of another; and let your wig be large enough to cover the whole of your red or white hair.

It is evident, therefore, that though a man may be ugly, there is no necessity for his being shocking.  Would that all men were convinced of this!  I verily believe that if Mr. —­ in his walking-dress, and Mr. —­ in his evening costume were to meet alone, in some solitary place, where there was nothing to divert their attention from one another, they would expire of mutual hideousness.

If you have any defect, so striking and so ridiculous as to procure you a nickname then indeed there is but one remedy,—­renounce society.

In the morning, before eleven o’clock even if you go out, you should not be dressed.  You would be stamped a parvenu if you were seen in anything better than a reputable old frock coat.  If you remain at home, and are a bachelor, it is permitted to receive visitors in a morning gown.  In summer, calico; in winter, figured cloth, faced with fur.  At dinner, a coat, of course, is indispensable.

The effect of a frock coat is to conceal the height.  If, therefore, you are beneath the ordinary statue, or much above it, you should affect frock coats on all occasions that etiquette permits.

Before going to a ball or party it is not sufficient that you consult your mirror twenty times.  You must be personally inspected by your servant or a friend.  Through defect of this, I once saw a gentleman enter a ball-room, attired with scrupulous elegance, but with one of his suspenders curling in graceful festoons about his feet.  His glass could not show what was behind.