Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/144

126 day, when dress seems to have become a mere covering, and the prosaic tendencies of the age are to despise everything but what ministers to actual material pleasure.

The gentleman before us lives fortunately one hundred years before our day and suffers from an opposite tendency in costume. His head is covered with a long flowing peruke, heavy with powder, and the drop curls hang down on his cheeks ambrosially; his cheeks are delicately rouged; and two patches, arranged with matchless art, complete the distinguished tout ensemble of the handsome face. At breast a cloud of lace reposes on the rich embroidery of his figured satin waistcoat, reaching to his knees; this lace is point de Venise and white, that fashion having come in just one month since. The sleeves of his rich doublet are turned back to his elbows and are as large as a bushel, the opening being filled up, however, with long ruffles, which reach down over the delicate jeweled hand. He wears silk stockings of spotless white, and his feet are cased in slippers of Spanish leather, adorned with diamond buckles. Add velvet garters below the knee, a little muff of leopard skin reposing near at hand upon a chair, not omitting a snuffbox peeping from the pocket, and Mr. Champ Effingham, just from Oxford and his grand tour, is before you with his various surroundings.

He is reading the work which some time since attained to such extreme popularity—Mr. Joseph Addison's serial, "The Spectator," collected now, for its great merits, into bound volumes. Mr. Effingham reads with a languid air (just as he sits) and turns over the leaves with an ivory paper cutter which he brought from Venice with the plate glass yonder on the side board near the silver baskets and pitchers. This languor is too perfect to be wholly affected, and when he yawns, as he does frequently, Mr. Effingham applies himself to that task very earnestly.