A new branch of the Fine Arts has lately flourished, which we do not
know how to designate by any better name than SHIRTICULTURE. It is the
art of painting on shirts—an art which cannot fail to go to the bosom of
every one who enters at all into it. It was a favourite maxim of Buffon,
that "_Le style c'est l'homme_." With all due respect to one who dressed
animals in the finest language, we beg to say, that nowadays "_La
chemise c'est l'homme_." The shirt is the man. Depend upon it, that
shortly the particular profession, trade, penchant, or weakness of every
one, will be laid bare to the whole world upon his breast. The gent has
nearest to his heart a ballet-girl; and the sportsman is immediately
detected by the last winner of the Derby peeping through his "Dickey."
The noble game of cricket has been got up on a piece of lawn, no bigger
than your chest; and we have seen Jack Sheppard breaking through a
publican's shirt-front. Rowing matches not unfrequently run down the
back of a river swell; and we know a gentleman who never appears on the
turf without a whole steeple-chase galloping right over him, with a
tremendous hunter jumping over each shoulder. The rage for pictorial
shirts will ultimately spread over everybody in the kingdom. Men of
noble descent will be drawing out their genealogical tree on a square of
fine calico; and admirers of the "Fancy" will be putting their pet
bull-dogs into muslin. We shall have heraldic shirts, theatrical shirts,
military shirts, archæological and antiquarian shirts, temperance and
convivial shirts, and shirts with portraits of puppy-dogs, men, parrots,
and women. We shall have artists in shirts, as we have artists in hair;
and every washerwoman's drying-ground will be an exhibition, to which
the public will be admitted without having to pay a shilling to witness
the pictures. A catalogue, in fact, could be drawn up, and might run as
follows:—
EXHIBITION OF SHIRTS IN THE WASHING ACADEMY OF MRS. TUBBS AND
JACK TOWELL, ESQ., BALL'S POND.