Wedding Garments.

ST. George's Church, Hanover Square, London, is the scene of a great number of those gorgeous and fashionable ceremonies called "marriages in high life." A pedestrian passenger in that select locality some bright sunshiny morning, is apt to find his course impeded not a little by a long stationary line of gilded carriages, the horses covered with white favours, and the coachmen and footmen swathed in white ribbons, and swelling majestically in white stockings. So great is the display of magnificence in the matter of dress on these occasions that there is a melancholy story extant-whether true or no, of course I do not pretend to say-of a bumpkin from the country, a tailor by profession, who had made up his mind to astonish the Londoners by his notions of taste and grandeur, being so overcome by the effect of a gentleman's vest and neck-tie, as he alighted from a carriage at St. George's Church, that he immediately returned to his native village and took a dose of prussic acid. The story as I heard it first was this-that at a certain small country village there lived a certain small country tailor, but his ideas were much larger than his sphere of usefulness, and he was anxious to give them full scope. His handiwork had long been the admiration of the neighbourhood for full three miles round, and he had arrayed many a rural swain for making conquests, and for consummating these conquests at the hymeneal altar. He

prided himself especially upon his skill in waistcoats, and used to say that no young man could keep single more than a week in one of Tom Cutaway's waistcoats, for the girls would have him whether he wished it or no. Persuaded by his wife, he made himself a special suit in which to parade the streets of London. It was his design to appear first of all in the pit of the Adelphi Theatre, in order to attract the attention of her Majesty, and then to adjourn to the Royal Grecian Saloon for the purpose of captivating his royal highness the Prince Consort, as he was refreshing himself with oysters and mild porter after the play. But having failed in this gigantic design, he rose with the lark next morning, and having equipped himself in his irresistible suit, in which he expected to be presented at court in a few days, he ensconced himself upon the "knife-board" of a Piccadilly omnibus, and rode as far as the Regent Circus. He then dismounted, and entered a barber's shop and enquired if this was not what was called "the west hend." "Yessir; certainly it is, sir," replies the barber. "Then curl my air, trim my whiskers, and brush my coat, for I've got an appintment in these parts this morning." These operations were duly performed, and having surveyed his bottle-green coat and buttons, his white cord trousers, his thunder and lightning neck-tie, and his indescribable waistcoat, he sallied forth. Never was such a waistcoat made or worn by man! Every colour of the rainbow did that wondrous garment contain. It looked like a sort of decoction of a Turkish ambassador's, an ostler's, a beefeater's, a tömfool's, and a Lord Chancellor's waistcoats all blended into one perfect and astonishing whole. Its happy wearer saw with pride how the London world opened its eyes, and as he saw the little boys stop and stare and point their fingers, the waistcoat swelled with satisfaction. In this happy state of mind, and this gorgeous state of body, our friend takes up his station at the steps of St. George's, Hanover Square, and in a little time he sees, issuing from the Church, a long procession of ladies and gentlemen. He presses forward to gratify his professional taste by examining their dresses more closely, and to gratify his personal vanity by

displaying his own more conspicuously. Just as he is remarking, with kindling jealousy, that there is something in the material of the ladies' dresses more costly than his own, and a cut about the gentlemen's costume which is a cut above his own, a stout and very red-faced beadle flattens his hat over his eyes and kicks him down the steps. When he has extricated his head, the carriages have driven away, and he stands almost alone, with the exception of three rude boys, who are making faces at him close under his nose. Now, I think the probability is, that he went home and drowned all memory in the bosom of his family; but the exaggeration of rumour will insist upon it that he swallowed prussic acid immediately on his return; while some declare, that on the morning following the adventure at the church, the servants of the Royal Humane Society discovered a top-boot protruding above the surface of the Serpentine in Hyde Park; and that further investigation brought to light a bottle-green suit, and a waistcoat which it baffled their ingenuity to describe. Be this as it may, the story proves how magnificent are the Wedding Garments worn at the altar in St. George's Church. If you look in the morning papers the day after one of these ceremonials, you will see some such announcement as the following, Yesterday morning, at St, George's, Hanover Square, by the Right Reverend Bishop of Starch, assisted by the Very Reverend Archdeacon Soapylip, the Most Noble the Marquis of Puppeytown, to the Honourable Lady Flora Adeliza Mariana Henrietta, youngest daughter of the late Lord Flirt, of Flirt Hall." Then follows a description of all the bridesmaids and their dresses, and an array of details of the toilette, which, of course, not being a French milliner, I cannot pretend to furnish. Possibly a few weeks afterwards you may take up the same newspaper and read a short paragraph in some corner just put in to fill up, entitled Melancholy Suicide," or something of that sort, and read, that a girl has been found drowned near one of the parapets of London Bridge, and that subsequent inquiry proves that she was formerly in the employ of Madame Flounciwolski, the eminent foreign milliner in Regent Street; but left it

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because of feeble and declining health. How many a dark chapter is concealed beneath the glitter of the details of a fashionable marriage ! How much real bloom and flower is dying while those artificial wreaths are being twined! How many tears do the poor have to pay to purchase the smiles of the rich! Yes, it is a sad, sad fact, that, too often, human happiness feeds and thrives on human misery. There are many men who prosper just in proportion as other men decay-who rear their superstructure of comfort upon the foundation of another's ruin. There are many rich men who drive their carriage wheels through the hearts of hundreds of hungry poor, and whose prancing horses set their hoofs upon the upturned faces of myriads of starving or starved families, like corpses on a festering battle-field. We get, too often, hardened to a tale of misery; and when it is often told, it loses its effect upon us. How often have we heard of the miseries and privations of those poor girls who earn their daily bread by their needle. Ever since glorious Tom Hood made England's heart shudder with his "Song of the Shirt" those miseries have been familiar in our ears. I have seen ladies, flounced to the eyes, and smothered in laces, feathers, ribbons, and flowers, shed tears as they have read it. I have heard it sung, recited, parodied, and praised. I never saw any one, however fashionable, who did not admire it. But still we have the same abuses existing amongst us; the same tragedies are heard of, and these poor girls are exposed to the same temptations, either to vice or the slow death which their slavery brings on. I do not see so much objection as many religious people do to the indulgences of taste and fashion on the part of the wealthy portion of society. I don't see why young ladies should not study "Le Follet," and deck their dear little bodies out to their hearts' content, without being abused and called idle and frivolous and all the rest of it. People with money have a right, to a certain extent, to spend that money as they please. It is, I confess, rather ludicrous than lamentable to my mind to observe the overweening importance that ladies attach to matters of toilette, and mere exterior. I have sometimes taken a