text:  We may thus observe how much Brummell went _before_ his age; for while he thus originated a dress which no modern refinement has yet exceeded and which contained all that is _de bon ton_ in modern equipment he was living in the midst of a generation almost studiously barbarian--the Foxite imitators of the French republicans--where every man's principle was measured by the closeness of his approach to savagery; and nothing but the War interposed to prevent the _sans-culottism_ alike of the body and the mind