phernalia of civilised Life, which we make so much of." Clothes made Marie Antoinette a queen, as Burke had pointed out. Carlyle pursued the point only to invert it. "Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity; Clothes have made Men of us; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens of us"—fashion plates, ambulatory mannequins.

"Custom is the greatest of Weavers," Carlyle wrote. Among her many tricks and artful illusions,

perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means we live: for man must work as well as wonder: and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurselings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. Am I to view the Stupendous with stupid indifference, because I have seen it twice, or two-hundred, or two-million times?

The reassuring effect of custom in hiding the terrors of existence behind familiar associations and routines, so highly prized by Burkean conservatives, at the same time deprives us of fresh experience—of an "original relation to the universe," as Emerson would have put it. Perhaps that explains why, living in a world too heavily costumed, we become more and more avid in our search for novelty—which wears thin all too quickly, when we find that new clothes fail to deliver the promised excitement.

Carlyle's unsympathetic account of custom might seem to align him with the party of progress, just as Emerson appeared at times to align himself with the party of hope, as he called it, against the party of memory. But the relevant contrast to custom, as Carlyle saw it, was not innovation but "wonder." He objected to the tyranny of custom because it discouraged men and women from looking beneath the surface of things, not because it discouraged them from experimentation. "Clothing," in his expansive treatment of the image, covered what was usually meant by civilization and progress. It referred among other things to the arts and sciences, to all the products of human ingenuity by means of which men and women seek to make themselves comfortable and secure but also to divert themselves, to beguile the time, and to satisfy the taste not just for

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