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Title: The Mirror of the Graces

Author: active 19th century Lady of distinction

Release date: April 7, 2022 [eBook #67790]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Frederic S. Hill, 1831

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIRROR
OF THE GRACES ***

THE

MIRROR OF THE GRACES.
CONTAINING

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS
FOR COMBINING

ELEGANCE, SIMPLICITY, AND ECONOMY
WITH FASHION IN DRESS;
HINTS ON FEMALE ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND MANNERS;
AND DIRECTIONS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF

HEALTH AND BEAUTY.

BY A LADY OF DISTINCTION.

“If Beauty be woman’s weapon, it must be feathered by the Graces, pointed by the eye of Discretion,
and shot by the hand of Virtue.”

FROM THE LONDON EDITION.

BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY FREDERIC S. HILL,
NO. 7, WATER STREET.

1831.

CONTENTS.

Preliminary Observations on the Subject 5
General Remarks on the Manners and Fashions of the Past and Present Times 14
On the Female Form 19
The same Subject, of Female Beauty, more explicitly considered 34
General Thoughts on Dress and Personal Decoration 48
On the Peculiarities of Dress, with reference to the Station of the Wearer 68
Of the Detail of Dress 82
On Deportment 105
Peculiarities in Carriage and Demeanor 110
On the Management of the Person in Dancing, and in the exercise of other Female
126
Accomplishments
Continuation of the same Subject 149
Conclusion 156
APPENDIX.
On the Use of Corsets 163
On the Ladies’ Passion for Levelling all Distinction of Dress 173
Recipes 183

MIRROR
OF
THE GRACES.

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ON THE SUBJECT.

“Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;
For contemplation he, and valor formed;
For softness she, and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him.”

Milton.
In discoursing on the degree of consequence, in the scale of creation, that
may be allowed to the human body, two extremes are generally adopted.
Epicureans, for obvious reasons, exalt our corporeal part to the first rank;
and Stoics, by opposite deductions, degrade it to the last. But to neither of
these opinions can the writer of these pages concede.
The body is as much a part of the human creature as the mind; by its
outward expression, we convey to others a sense of our opinions, hopes,
fears, and affections—we communicate love, and we excite it. We enjoy,
not only the pleasures of the senses, but the delights which shoot from mind
to mind, in the pressure of a hand, the glance of an eye, and the whisper of
the heart. Shall we then despise this ready and obedient vehicle of all that
passes within the invisible soul? Shall we contemn it as a lump of
encumbering clay—as a piece of corruption, fitter for the charnel-house
than the bosom of affection?
These ascetic ideas may be consistent with the thankless superstition of
the ancient Zenos, or the modern fanatics, who see neither beauty nor
joyfulness in the works of the bounteous Lord of Nature; but the rational
and fair-judging mind, which acknowledges “use and decency” in all the

Creator’s works, while it turns from the pagan devotion which the libertine
pays to his own body, regards that inferior part of himself with the respect
which is due to it in consideration of its Maker and its purpose.
“Reverence thyself!” says the philosopher, not only with relation to the
mind which directs, but to the body which executes. God created the body,
not only for usefulness, but adorned it with loveliness; and what he has
made so pleasing, shall we disesteem, and refuse to apply to its admirable
destination?—The very approving and innocent complacency we all feel in
the contemplation of beauty, whether it be that of a landscape or of a flower,
is a sufficient witness that the pleasure which pervades our hearts at the
sight of human charms, was planted there by the Divine Framer of all
things, as a principle of delight and social attraction. To this end, then, I
seek to turn your attention, my fair countrywomen, upon yourselves!—not
only to the cultivation of your minds, but to maintain in its intended station
that inferior part of yourselves, which mistaken gravity would, on the one
hand, lead you to neglect as altogether worthless; and vanity, on the other,
incline you too much to cherish, and egregiously to over-value.
From this you will gather, that the person of a woman is the primary
subject of this discourse.
Mothers, perhaps, (those estimable mothers who value the souls as the
better parts of their daughters,) may start at such a text. But I call them to
recollect, that it is “good all things should be in order!” This is a period
when absurdity, bad taste, shamelessness, and self-interest, in the shapes of
tire-men and tire-women, have arranged themselves in close siege around
the beauty, and even chastity, of your daughters; and to preserve these
graces in their original purity, I, a woman of virtue and a Christian, do not
think it beneath my dignity to lift my pen.
Dr. Knox will not refuse to be my auxiliary, as a grave auxiliary may be
necessary to give consequence to a subject usually deemed so trivial. “Taste
requires a congruity between the internal character and the external
appearance,” says he; “and the imagination will involuntarily form to itself
an idea of such a correspondence. First ideas are in general of considerable
consequence; and I should, therefore, think it wise in the female world to
take care that their appearance should not convey a forbidding idea to the
most superficial observer.”

Another author shall speak for me besides this respected moralist. The
very High Priest of the Graces, the discriminating Chesterfield, declared,
that “a prepossessing exterior is a perpetual letter of recommendation.” To
show how different such an exterior is from affectation and extravagance, is
one object of these pages; and I hope that my fair and candid readers will,
after perusal, lay them down with a conviction that beauty is a blessing, and
is to be used with maidenly discretion; that modesty is grace; simplicity
elegance; and consistency the charm which rivets the attracted heart of
well-judging men.
That you have sought my sentiments on these subjects makes it easier to
me to enter into the minute detail I meditate. Indeed, I have ever blamed, as
impolitic, the austerity which condemns, without distinction, any attention
to personal appearance. It is surely more reasonable to direct the youthful
mind to that medium between negligence and nicety which will preserve the
person in health and elegance, than, by leaving a young woman ignorant of
the real and supposed advantages of these graces, render her liable to learn
the truth in the worst way from strangers, who will either insult her
aggravated deformity, or teach her to set off her before-obscured charms
with, perhaps, meretricious assistance.
It is unjust and dangerous to hold out false lights to young persons; for,
finding that their guides have, in one respect, designedly led them astray,
they may be led likewise to reject as untrue all else they have been taught;
and so nothing but disappointment, error, and rebellion can be the
consequence.
Let girls advancing to womanhood be told the true state of the world with
which they are to mingle. Let them know its real opinions on the subjects
connected with themselves as women, companions, friends, relatives. Hide
not from them what society thinks and expects on all these matters; but fail
not to show them, at the same time, where the fashions of the day would
lead them wrong—where the laws of heaven and man’s approving (though
not always submitting) reason, would keep them right.
Let religion and morality be the foundation of the female character. The
artist may then adorn the structure without any danger to its safety. When a
girl is instructed on the great purposes of her existence,—that she is an
immortal being, as well as a mortal woman,—you may, without fearing ill

impressions, show her, that as we admire the beauty of the rose, as well as
esteem its medicinal power, so her personal charms will be dear in the eyes
of him whose heart is occupied by the graces of her yet more estimable
mind. We may safely teach a well-educated girl, that virtue ought to wear an
inviting aspect—that it is due to her excellence to decorate her comely
apparel. But we must never cease to remember that it is virtue we seek to
adorn. It must not be a merely beautiful form; for that, if it possess not the
charm of intelligence, the bond of rational tenderness, is a frame without a
soul—a statue which we look on and admire, pass away and forget. We
must impress upon the yet ingenuous maid, that while beauty attracts, its
influence is transient, unless it presents itself as the harbinger of that good
sense and principle which can alone secure the affection of a husband, the
esteem of friends, and the respect of the world. Show her that regularity of
features and symmetry of form are not essentials in the composition of the
woman whom the wise man would select as the partner of his life. Seek, as
an example, some one of your less fair acquaintance, whose sweet
disposition, gentle manners, and winning deportment, render her the delight
of her kindred, the dear solace of her husband. Show your young and lovely
pupil what use this amiable woman has made of her few talents; and then
call on her to cultivate her more extraordinary endowments to the glory of
her Creator, the honor of her parents, and to the maintenance of her own
happiness in both worlds. To do this, requires that her aims should be
virtuous, and the means she employs to reach them of the same nature.
We know, from every record under heaven, from the sacred page to that
of the heathen world, that woman was made to be the help-mate of man—
that, by rendering herself pleasing in his sight, she is the assuager of his
pains, the solacer of his wo, the sharer of his joys, the chief agent in the
communication of his sublunary bliss. This is beautifully alluded to in the
Book of Genesis, where the work of Creation is represented as incomplete,
and the felicity of Paradise itself imperfect, till woman was bestowed to
consummate its delights:—
“The world was sad! the garden was a wild;
And man, the hermit, sighed—till woman smiled.”
We have all read in the sacred oracles, that “a woman’s desire is unto her
husband!” and for that tender relation, the first on earth, (for, before the
bonds of relationship, man and woman became a wedded pair,) woman

must leave father and mother, and cleave unto him alone. Hence, I shall no
longer beg the question, whether it be not right that a chaste maid should
adorn herself with the graces of youth and modesty, and, with a sober
reference to the duties of her sex, present herself a candidate for the love
and protection of manliness and virtue, in the most agreeable manner
possible.
By making the fairness of the body the sign of the mind’s purity, man is
imperceptibly attracted to the object designed for him by Heaven as the
partner of his life, the future mother of his children, and the angel which is
to accompany him into eternity. Hence, insignificant as the means may
seem, the end is great; and poor as we may choose to consider them, we all
feel their effects, and enjoy their sweetness.
Having thus explained my subject, my fair friends will readily perceive,
that there cannot be anything hostile to female delicacy in the prosecution
of my scheme. I give to woman all her privileges; I allow her the empire of
all her personal charms; I will assist her to increase their force: but it must
be with a constant reference to their being the ensign of her more estimable
mental attractions. She must never suppose that when I insist on attention to
person and manners, I forget the mind and heart; or when I commend
external grace, that I pass unregarded the internal beauty of the virgin soul.
In order to give a regular and perspicuous elucidation of the several
branches of my subject, I shall arrange them under separate heads.
Sometimes I may illustrate by observations drawn from abroad, at other
times by remarks collected at home. Having been a traveller in my youth,
whilst visiting foreign courts with my husband, on an errand connected with
the general welfare of nations, I could not overlook the influence which the
women of every country hold over the morals and happiness of the opposite
sex in every rank and degree.
Fine taste in apparel I have ever seen the companion of pure morals,
whilst a licentious style of dress was as certainly the token of the like laxity
in manners and conduct. To correct this dangerous fashion, ought to be the
study and attempt of every mother—of every daughter—of every woman.

GENERAL REMARKS ON THE MANNERS AND
FASHIONS OF THE PAST AND PRESENT TIMES.

“Manners with fortunes, humors turn with climes,
Tenets with books, and principles with times.”

Pope.
When Innocence left the world, astonished man blushed at his own and
his partner’s nakedness, and coverings were soon invented. For many an
age, the twisted foliage of trees, and the skins of beasts, were the only
garments which clothed our ancestors. Decoration was unknown, excepting
the wild flower, plucked from the luxuriant shrub, the shell from the beach,
or the berry off the tree. Nature was then unsophisticated; and the lover
looked for no other attraction in his bride, than the peach-bloom on her
cheek—the downcast softness of her consenting eye.
In after times, when Avarice ploughed the earth, and Ambition bestrode
it, the gem and the silken fleece, the various product of the loom, and the
Tyrian mystery of dyes, all united to give embellishments to beauty, and
splendor to majesty of mien. But even at that period, when the east and
south laid their decorating riches at the feet of woman, we see, by the
sculpture yet remaining to us, that the dames of Greece (the then exemplars
of the world) were true to the simple laws of just taste. The amply-folding
robe, cast round the harmonious form; the modest clasp and zone on the
bosom; the braided hair, or the veiled head; these were the fashions alike of
the wife of a Phocion, and the mistress of an Alcibiades. A chastened taste
ruled at their toilets; and from that hour to this, the forms and modes of
Greece have been those of the poet, the sculptor, and the painter.
Rome, queen of the world! the proud dictatress to Athenian and Spartan
dames, disdained not to array herself in their dignified attire; and the statues
of her virgins, her matrons, and her empresses, show, in every portico of her
ancient streets, the graceful fashions of her Grecian province.
The irruption of the Goths and Vandals made it needful for women to
assume a more repulsive garb. The flowing robe, the easy shape, the soft,

unfettered hair, gave place to skirts, shortened for flight or contest—to the
hardened vest, and head buckled in gold or silver.
Thence, by a natural descent, have we the iron boddice, stiff farthingale,
and spiral coiffure, of the middle ages. The courts of Charlemagne, of our
Edwards, Henries, and Elizabeth, all exhibit the figures of women as if in a
state of siege. Such lines of circumvallation and outworks; such
impregnable bulwarks of whale-bone, wood, and steel; such impassable
mazes of gold, silver, silk, and furbelows, met a man’s view, that, before he
had time to guess it was a woman that he saw, she had passed from his
sight; and he only formed a vague wish on the subject, by hearing, from an
interested father or brother, that the moving castle was one of the softer sex.
These preposterous fashions disappeared, in England, a short time after
the Restoration; they had been a little on the wane during the more classic,
though distressful reign of Charles I.; and what the beautiful pencil of
Vandyke shows us, in the graceful dress of Lady Carlisle and Sacharissa,
was rendered yet more correspondent to the soft undulations of nature, in
the garments of the lovely, but frail beauties of the Second Charles’s court.
But as change too often is carried to extremes, in this case the unzoned
tastes of the English ladies thought no freedom too free; their vestments
were gradually unloosened of the brace, until another touch would have
exposed the wearer to no thicker covering than the ambient air.
The matron reign of Anne, in some measure, corrected this indecency.
But it was not till the accession of the House of Brunswick, that it was
finally exploded, and gave way by degrees to the ancient mode of female
fortification, by introducing the hideous Parisian fashion of hoops, buckram
stays, waists to the hips, screwed to the circumference of a wasp, brocaded
silks stiff with gold, shoes with heels so high as to set the wearer on her
toes; and heads, for quantity of false hair, either horse or human, and height
to outweigh, and perhaps outreach, the Tower of Babel! These were the
figures which our grandmothers exhibited; nay, such was the appearance I
myself made in my early youth; and something like it may yet be seen at a
drawing-room, on court-days.
When the arts of Sculpture and Painting, in their fine specimens from the
chisels of Greece and the pencils of Italy, were brought into this country,
taste began to mould the dress of our female youth after their more graceful

fashion. The health-destroying boddice was laid aside; brocades and whale-
bone disappeared; and the easy shape and flowing drapery again resumed
the rights of nature and of grace. The bright hues of auburn, raven, or
golden tresses, adorned the head in its native simplicity, putting to shame
the few powdered toupees, which yet lingered on the brow of prejudice and
deformity.
Thus, for a short time, did the Graces indeed preside at the toilet of the
British beauty; but a strange caprice seems now to have dislodged these
gentle handmaids. Here stands affectation distorting the form into a
thousand unnatural shapes; and there, ill-taste, loading it with grotesque
ornaments, gathered (and mingled confusedly) from Grecian and Roman
models, from Egypt, China, Turkey, and Hindostan. All nations are
ransacked to equip a modern fine lady; and, after all, she may perhaps strike
a contemporary beau as a fine lady, but no son of nature could, at a glance,
possibly find out that she meant to represent an elegant woman.
To impress upon your minds, my fair friends, that symmetry of figure
ought ever to be accompanied by harmony of dress, and that there is a
certain propriety in habiliment adapted to form, age, and degree, shall be
the purport of my next observations.

ON THE FEMALE FORM.

“Who doth not feel, until his aching sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess
The might, the majesty of loveliness?”

Byron.
To preserve the health of the human form, is the first object of
consideration. This is of primary importance, for with its health we
necessarily maintain its symmetry, and improve its beauty.
The foundation of a just proportion, in all its parts, must be laid in
infancy; for, “as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.” A light dress, which
gives freedom to the functions of life and action, is the best adapted to
permit unobstructed growth; for thence the young fibres, uninterrupted by
obstacles of art, will shoot harmoniously into the form which nature drew.
The garb of childhood should in all respects be easy; not to impede its
movements by ligatures on the chest, the loins, the legs, or the arms. By this
liberty, we shall see the muscles of the limbs gradually assume the fine
swell and insertions which only unconstrained exercise can produce. The
shape will sway gracefully on the firmly poised waist; the chest will rise in
noble and healthy expanse; and the human figure will start forward at the
blooming age of youth, maturing into the full perfection of unsophisticated
nature.
The lovely form of woman, in particular, thus educated, or rather thus left
to its natural bias, assumes a variety of interesting characters. In one
youthful figure, we see the lineaments of a wood-nymph; a form slight and
elastic in all its parts. The shape,
“Small by degrees, and beautifully less,
From the soft bosom to the tender waist!”
A foot light as that of her whose flying step scarcely brushed the
“unbending corn;” and limbs, whose agile grace moved in gay harmony
with the turns of her swan-like neck and sparkling eyes.

Another fair one appears with the chastened dignity of a vestal. Her
proportions are of a less aërial outline. As she draws near, we perceive that
the contour of her figure is on a broader and less flexible scale than that of
her more ethereal sister. Euphrosyne speaks in the one, Melpomene in the
other.
Between these two lies the whole range of female character in form; and,
in proportion as the figure approaches the one extreme or the other, we call
it grave or gay, majestic or graceful. Not but that the same person may, by a
happy combination of charms, unite these qualities in different degrees, as
we sometimes see graceful majesty and majestic grace. Unless the
commanding figure softens the amplitude of its contour with a gentle
elegance, it may possess a sort of regal consequence, but it will be that of a
heavy and harsh importance; and, on the other hand, unless the slight and
airy form, full of youth and animal spirits, superadds to these attractions the
grace of a restraining dignity, her vivacity will be deemed levity, and her
activity the romping of a wild hoyden.
Young women, therefore, when they present themselves to the world,
must not implicitly fashion their demeanors according to the levelling rules
of the generality of school-governesses; but, considering the character of
their own figures, allow their deportment, and select their dress, to follow
and correct the bias of nature.
There is a class of female contour which bears such faint marks of any
positive character, that the best advice I can give to them who have it, is to
assume that of the sedate. Such an appearance is unobtrusive; it is amiable,
and not only secure from animadversion, but very likely to awaken respect
and love. Indeed, in all cases, a modest reserve is essential to the perfection
of feminine attraction.
As it has been observed, that, during the period of youth, different
women wear a variety of characters, such as the gay, the grave, &c. when it
is found that even this loveliest season of life places its subjects in varying
lights, how necessary does it seem that women should carry this idea yet
further by analogy, and recollect that she has a summer as well as a spring,
an autumn, and a winter! As the aspect of the earth alters with the changes
of the year, so does the appearance of a woman adapt itself to the time

which passes over her. Like the rose, she buds, she blooms, she fades, she
dies!
When the freshness of virgin youth vanishes—when Delia passes her
teens, and approaches her thirtieth year, she may then consider her day as at
the meridian; but the sun which shines so brightly on her beauties, declines
while it displays them. A few short years, and the jocund step, the airy
habit, the sportive manner, must all be exchanged for “faltering steps and
slow.” Before this happens, it would be well for her to remember that it is
wiser to throw a shadow over her yet unimpaired charms, than to hold them
in the light till they are seen to decay.
Each age has an appropriate style of figure and pleasing; and it is the
business of discernment and taste to discover and maintain those
advantages in their due seasons.
The general characteristics of youth, are meek dignity, chastened
sportiveness, and gentle seriousness. Middle age has the privilege of
preserving, unaltered, the graceful majesty and tender gravity which may
have marked its earlier years. But the gay manners of the comic muse must,
in the advance of life, be discreetly softened down into little more than
cheerful amenity. Time marches on, and another change takes place.
Amiable as the former characteristics may be, they must give way to the
sober, the venerable aspect with which age, experience, and “a soul
commercing with the skies,” ought to adorn the silver hairs of the Christian
matron.
Nature having maintained a harmony between the figure of woman and
her years, it is decorous that the consistency should extend to the materials
and fashion of her apparel. For youth to dress like age, is an instance of bad
taste seldom seen. But age, affecting the airy garments of youth, the
transparent drapery of Cos, and the sportiveness of a girl, is an anachronism
as frequent as it is ridiculous.
Virgin, bridal Beauty, when she arrays herself with taste, obeys an end of
her creation—that of increasing her charms in the eyes of some virtuous
lover, or the husband of her bosom. She is approved. But when the wrinkled
fair, the hoary-headed matron, attempts to equip herself for conquest, to
awaken sentiments which, when the bloom on her cheek has disappeared,
her rouge can never recall; and, despite of all her efforts, we can perceive

“memento mori” written on her face, then we cannot but deride her folly, or,
in pity, counsel her rather to seek for charms, the mental graces of Madame
de Sevigné, than the meretricious arts of Ninon de l’Enclos.
But that, in some cases, wrinkles may be long warded off, and auburn
locks preserve a lengthened freshness, is not to be denied; and, where
nature prolongs the youth of a Helen or a Sarah, it is not for man to see her
otherwise. These are rare instances; and, in the minds of rational women,
ought rather to excite wonder, than desire to emulate their extended reign.
But what ought to be, we know is not always adopted. St. Evremond has
told us, that “a woman’s last sighs are for her beauty;” and what this wit has
advanced, the sex has ever been too ready to confirm. A strange kind of art,
a sort of sorcery, is prescribed by tradition, and in books, in the form of
cosmetics, &c., to preserve female charms in perpetual youth. But I fear
that, until these composts can be concocted in Medea’s caldron, they will
never have any better effect than exercising the faith and patience of the
credulous dupes, who expect to find the elixir vitæ in any mixture under
heaven.
The rules which I would lay down for the preservation of the bloom of
beauty, during its natural life, are few, and easy of access. And, besides
having advantage of speaking from my own wide and minute observation, I
have the authorities of the most eminent physicians of every age, to support
my argument.
The secret of preserving beauty lies in three things,—temperance,
exercise, and cleanliness.—From these few heads, I hope much good
instruction may be deduced. Temperance includes moderation at table, and
in the enjoyment of what the world calls pleasure. A young beauty, were she
fair as Hebe, and elegant as the Goddess of Love herself, would soon lose
these charms by a course of inordinate eating, drinking, and late hours.
I guess that my delicate young readers will start at this last sentence, and
wonder how it can be that any well-bred woman should think it possible
that pretty ladies could be guilty of either of the two first-mentioned
excesses. But, when I speak of inordinate eating, &c., I do not mean
feasting like a glutton, or drinking to intoxication. My objection is not more
against the quantity than the quality of the dishes which constitute the usual
repast of women of fashion. Their breakfasts not only set forth tea and

coffee, but chocolate, and hot bread and butter. Both of these latter articles,
when taken constantly, are hostile to health and female delicacy. The heated
grease, which is their principal ingredient, deranges the stomach; and, by
creating or increasing bilious disorders, gradually overspreads the fair skin
with a wan or yellow hue. After this meal, a long and exhausting fast not
unfrequently succeeds, from ten in the morning till six or seven in the
evening, when dinner is served up; and the half-famished beauty sits down
to sate a keen appetite with Cayenne soups, fish, French patées steaming
with garlic, roast and boiled meat, game, tarts, sweetmeats, ices, fruits, &c.
&c. &c. How must the constitution suffer under the digestion of this
melange! How does the heated complexion bear witness to the combustion
within! And, when we consider that the beverage she takes to dilute this
mass of food, and assuage the consequent fever in her stomach, is not
merely water from the spring, but champagne, madeira, and other wines,
foreign and domestic, you cannot wonder that I should warn the
inexperienced creature against intemperance. The superabundance of
aliment which she takes in at this time, is not only destructive of beauty, but
the period of such repletion is full of other dangers. Long fasting wastes the
powers of digestion, and weakens the springs of life. In this enfeebled state,
at the hour when nature intends we should prepare for general repose, we
put our stomach and animal spirits to extraordinary exertion. Our vital
functions are overtasked and overloaded;—we become hectic—for
observation strongly declares that invalid and delicate persons should rarely
eat solids after three o’clock in the day, as fever is generally the
consequence; and thus, almost every complaint that distresses and destroys
the human frame, may be engendered.
“When hunger calls, obey; nor often wait
Till hunger sharpen to corrosive pain;
For the keen appetite will feast beyond
What nature well can bear; and one extreme
Ne’er without danger meets its own reverse.”
Besides, when we add to this evil the present mode of bracing the
digestive part of the body, in what is called long stays, to what an extent
must reach the baneful effects of a protracted and abundant repast? Indeed,
I am fully persuaded that long fasting, late dining, and the excessive
repletion then taken into the exhausted stomach, with the tight pressure of

steel and whalebone on the most susceptible parts of the frame then called
into action, and the midnight, nay, morning hours, of lingering pleasure, are
the positive causes of colds taken, bilious fevers, consumptions, and
atrophies. By the means enumerated, the firm texture of the constitution is
broken, and the principles of health being in a manner decomposed, the
finest parts fly off, and the dregs maintain the poor survivor of herself, in a
sad kind of artificial existence. Delicate proportion gives place either to
miserable leanness or shapeless fat. The once fair skin assumes a pallid
rigidity, or a bloated redness, which the vain possessor would still regard as
the roses of health and beauty.
To repair these ravages, comes the aid of padding, to give shape where
there is none; long stays, to compress into form the chaos of flesh; and
paints of all hues, to rectify the disorder of the complexion. But useless are
these attempts. If dissipation, disease, and immoderation, have wrecked the
fair vessel of female charms, it is not in the power of Esculapius himself to
refit the shattered bark; or of the Syrens, with all their songs and wiles, to
conjure its battered sides from the rocks, and make it ride the seas in gallant
trim again.
It is with pleasure that I turn from this ruin of all that is beauteous and
lovely, to the cheering hope of preserving every charm unimpaired; and by
means which the most ingenuous mind need not blush to acknowledge.
The rules, I repeat, are few. First, Temperance: a well-timed use of the
table, and so moderate a pursuit of pleasure, that the midnight ball,
assembly, and theatre, shall not too frequently recur.
My next specific is that of gentle and daily Exercise in the open air.
Nature teaches us, in the gambols and sportiveness of the young of the
lower animals, that bodily exertion is necessary for the growth, vigor, and
symmetry of the animal frame; while the too studious scholar, and the
indolent man of luxury, exhibit in themselves the pernicious consequences
of the want of exercise.
This may be almost always obtained, either on horseback or on foot, in
fine weather; and when that is denied, in a carriage. Country air in the
fields, or in gardens, when breathed at proper hours, is an excellent bracer
of the nerves, and a sure brightener of the complexion. But these hours are
neither under the mid-day sun in summer, when its beams scorch the skin

and ferment the blood; nor beneath the dews of evening, when the
imperceptible damps, saturating the thinly-clad body, send the wanderer
home infected with the disease that is to lay her, ere a returning spring, in
the silent tomb! Both these periods are pregnant with danger to delicacy and
carelessness.
The morning, about two or three hours after sunrise, is the most
salubrious time for a vigorous walk. But, as the day advances, if you choose
to prolong the sweet enjoyment of the open air, then the thick wood or
shady lane will afford refreshing shelter from the too intense heat of the
sun. In short, the morning and evening dew, and the unrepelled blaze of a
summer noon, must alike be ever avoided as the enemies of health and
beauty.
“Fly, if you can, these violent extremes
Of air; the wholesome is nor moist nor dry.”

Armstrong.
Cleanliness, my last recipe, (and which is, like the others, applicable to
all ages,) is of most powerful efficacy. It maintains the limbs in their
pliancy, the skin in its softness, the complexion in its lustre, the eyes in their
brightness, the teeth in their purity, and the constitution in its fairest vigor.
To promote cleanliness, I can recommend nothing preferable to bathing.
The frequent use of tepid baths is not more grateful to the sense than it is
salutary to the health, and to beauty. By such ablution, all accidental
corporeal impurities are thrown off; cutaneous obstructions removed; and
while the surface of the body is preserved in its original brightness, many
threatening disorders are removed or prevented. Colds in the young, and
rheumatic and paralytic affections in the old, are all dispersed by this simple
and delightful antidote. By such means the women of the East render their
skins softer than that of the tenderest babes in this climate, and preserve that
health which sedentary confinement would otherwise destroy.
This delightful and delicate Oriental fashion is now, I am happy to say,
prevalent almost all over the continent. From the Villas of Italy, to the
Chateaux of France; from the Castles of Germany, to the Palaces of
Muscovy; we may everywhere find the marble bath under the vaulted
portico or the sheltering shade. Every house of every nobleman or

gentleman, in every nation under the sun, excepting Britain, possesses one
of those genial friends to cleanliness and comfort. The generality of English
ladies seem to be ignorant of the use of any bath larger than a wash-hand
basin. This is the more extraordinary to me, when I contemplate the
changeable temperature of the climate, and consider the corresponding
alterations in the bodily feelings of the people. By abruptly checking the
secretions, it produces those chronic and cutaneous diseases so peculiar to
our nation, and so heavy a cause of complaint.
This very circumstance renders baths more necessary in England than
anywhere else; for as this is the climate most subject to sudden heats and
colds, rains and fogs, tepid immersion is the only sovereign remedy against
their usual morbific effects. Indeed, so impressed am I with the
consequence of their regimen, that I strongly recommend to every lady to
make a bath as indispensable an article in her house as a looking-glass:
“This is the purest exercise of health,
The kind refresher of the summer heats;
Even from the body’s purity, the mind
Receives a secret sympathetic aid.”
It may be remarked, en passant, that rubbing of the skin in the bath is an
excellent substitute for exercise, when that is impracticable out-of-doors.
I must not draw this chapter to a close without offering my fair readers a
few remarks on the malignant influence exercised on the features by an ill-
regulated temper. The face is the index of the mind. On its expressive page
are recorded in characters lasting as life itself, the gloom of sullenness, the
arrogance of pride, the withering of envy, or the storm of anger; for, even
after the fury of the tempest has subsided, its fearful devastations remain
behind.
“From anger she may then be freed,
But peevishness and spleen succeed.”
The first emotions of anger are apparent to the most superficial observer.
Every indulgence in its paroxysms, both adds strength to its authority, and
engraves its history in deeper relief on the forehead of its votaries. What a
pity it is that antiquity provides us with no authentic portrait of the

illustrious Xantippe! for I am sure the features of that lady would lend their
ready testimony to the value of my admonitions.
When good-humor and vivacity reign within, the face is lighted up with
benignant smiles; where peace and gentleness are the tenants of the bosom,
the countenance beams with mildness and complacency. Evil temper has,
with truth, been called a more terrible enemy to beauty than the small-pox. I
beseech you, therefore, as you value the preservation of your charms, to
resist the dominion of this rude despoiler, to foster and encourage the
feelings of kindliness and good-humor, and to repress every emotion of a
contrary character.
I shall conclude this important subject by remarking with the Spectator,
that “no woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more
than she can be witty only by the gift of speech.”

THE SAME SUBJECT, OF FEMALE BEAUTY, MORE
EXPLICITLY CONSIDERED.

“Let Art no useless ornament display,
But just explain what Nature meant to say.”

Young.
So far, my friends, I have thrown together my sentiments on the
aggregate of the female form: I shall now descend to particulars, and leave
it to your judgments to adopt my suggestions according to the
correspondence with your different characters.
The preservation of an agreeable complexion (which always presupposes
health) is not the most insignificant of exterior charms. Though we yield
due admiration to regularity of features, (the Grecian contour being usually
so called,) yet when we consider them merely in the outline, our pleasure
can go no further than that of a cold critic, who regards the finely
proportioned lineaments of life as he would those of a statue. It is
complexion that lends animation to a picture; it is complexion that gives
spirit to the human countenance. Even the language of the eyes loses half its
eloquence, if they speak from the obscurity of an inexpressive skin. The
life-blood in the mantling cheek; the ever-varying hues of nature glowing in
the face, “as if her very body thought;” these are alike the ensigns of beauty
and the heralds of the mind; and the effect is, an impression of loveliness,
an attraction, which fills the beholder with answering animation and the
liveliest delight.
“’Tis not a lip or eye we beauty call,
But the joint force and full result of all.”
As a Juno-featured maid with a dull skin, by most people, will only be
coldly pronounced critically handsome; so a young woman with very
indifferent features, but a fine complexion, will, from ten persons out of
twelve, receive spontaneous and warm admiration.
The experience (when once we admit the proposition that it is right to
keep the casket bright which contains so precious a gem as the soul) must
induce us to take precautions against the injuries continually threatening the

tender surface of the skin. It may be next to an impossibility, to change the
color of an eye, to alter the form of the nose, or the turn of the mouth; but
though Heaven has given us a complexion which vies with the flowers of
the field, we yet have it in our power to render it dingy by neglect, coarse
through intemperance, and sallow by dissipation.
Such excesses must therefore be avoided; for, though there may be a
something in the pallid cheek which excites interest, yet, without a certain
appearance of health, there can never be an impression of loveliness. A fine,
clear skin, gives an assurance of the inherent residence of three admirable
graces to beauty; Wholesomeness, Neatness, and Cheerfulness. Every fair
means ought to be sought to maintain these vouchers, for not only health of
body, but health of mind.
I have already given some hints to this purpose; at least as far as relates
to the purity of the alimentary springs of sublunary life: those which are in
the heart, and point through time into eternity, must not be less observed;
for, unless its thoughts are kept in corresponding order and the passions
held in peace, all prescriptions will be vain to keep those boiling fluids in
check, which, in spite of Roman fard and balm of Mecca, will spread
themselves over the skin, and there show an outward and visible sign of the
malignant spirit within. Independent of these intellectual causes of
corporeal defects, disorders of the skin, arising from accidental
circumstances, are more frequent in this country than in any other; and the
fashions of the day are still more inimical to the complexion of its
inhabitants, than the climate. The frequent and sudden changes from heat to
cold, by abruptly exciting or repressing the regular secretions of the skin,
roughen its texture, injure its hue, and often deform it with unseemly,
though transitory, eruptions. All this is increased by the habit ladies have of
exposing themselves unveiled, and frequently without bonnets, in the open
air. The head and face have then no defence against the attacks of the
surrounding atmosphere, and the effects are obvious. The barouche, for this
reason, and the more consequential one of subjecting its inmates to
dangerous chills, is a fatal addition to the variety of English equipages. Our
autumnal evenings, with this carriage and our gossamer apparel, have
already sent many of my young female acquaintance to untimely graves.
To remedy these evils, I would strenuously recommend, for health’s sake,
as well as for beauty, that no lady should make one in any riding, airing, or

walking party, without putting on her head something capable of affording
both shelter and warmth. Shakspeare, the poet of the finest taste in female
charms, makes Viola regret having been obliged to “throw her sun-
expelling mask away!” Such a defence I do not pretend to recommend; but I
consider a veil a useful as well as elegant part of dress; it can be worn to
suit any situation; open or close, just as the heat or cold may render it
necessary.
The custom which some ladies have, when warm, of powdering their
faces, washing them with cold water, or throwing off their bonnets, that
they may cool the faster, are all very destructive habits. Each of them is
sufficient (when it meets with any predisposition in the blood) to spread a
surfeit over the skin, and make a once beautiful face hideous forever.
The person, when overheated, should always be allowed to cool
gradually, and of itself, without any more violent assistant than, perhaps, the
gentle undulation of the neighboring air by a fan. Streams of wind from
opened doors and windows, or what is called a thorough air, are all bad and
highly dangerous applications. These impatient remedies for heat are often
resorted to in balls and crowded assemblies; and as frequently as they are
used, we hear of sore throats, coughs, and fevers. While it is the fashion to
fill a drawing-room like a theatre, similar means ought to be adopted, to
prevent the ill effects of the consequent corrupted atmosphere, and the
temptation to seek relief by dangerous resources. Instead of the open
balcony, and yawning door, we should see ventilators in every window; and
thus feel a constant succession of pure and temperate air.
Excessive heat, as well as excessive cold, is apt to cause distempers of
the skin; and as the fine lady, by her strange habits, is as prone to such
changes as the desert-wandering gipsy, it is requisite that she should be
particularly careful to correct the deforming consequences of her
fashionable exposures. For her usual ablution, night and morning, nothing is
so fine an emollient for any rigidity or disease of the face as a wash of
French or white brandy, and rose-water; the spirit making only one-third of
the mixture. The brandy keeps up that gentle action of the skin which is
necessary to the healthy appearance of its parts. It also cleanses the surface.
The rose-water corrects the drying property of the spirit, leaving the skin in
a natural, soft, and flexible state. Where white or French brandy cannot be
obtained, half the quantity of spirits of wine will tolerably supply its place.

The eloquent effect of complexion will, I hope, my fair friends, obtain
your pardon for my having confined your attention so long to what is
generally thought (though in contradiction to what is felt) a trifling feature,
if so I may be allowed to name it.
I am aware of your expectations, that I would give the precedence, in this
dissertation, to the eye. I subscribe to its supereminent dignity; for none can
deny that it is regarded by all nations as the faithful interpreter of the mind,
as the window of the soul, the index in which we read each varied emotion
of the heart; it is, indeed, the “spirit’s throne of light.” But how increased an
expression does this intelligent feature convey, when aided by the glowing
tints of an eloquent complexion! Indeed, it is the happy coincidence of the
eye and the complexion which forms the strongest point of what the French
call contenance.
The animated changes of sensibility are nowhere more apparent than in
the transparent surface of a clear skin. Who has not perceived, and admired,
the rising blush of modesty enrich the cheek of a lovely girl, and, in the
sweet effusion, most gratefully discern the true witness of the purity within?
Who has not been sensible to the sudden glow on the face, which
announces, ere the lips open, or the eye sparkles, the approach of some
beloved object? Nay, will not even the sound of his name paint the
blooming cheek with deeper roses?
“Who hath not owned, with rapture-smitten frame,
The power of grace, the magic of a name?”
Shall we reverse the picture? I have shown how the soul proclaims her
joy through its wondrous medium; shall she speak her sorrows too? Then let
us call to mind, who have beheld the deadly paleness of her who learns the
unexpected destruction of her dearest possessions! Perhaps a husband, a
lover, or a brother, mingled with the slain, or fallen, untimely, by some
dreadful accident. Sudden partings like these
“Press the life from out young hearts.”
We see the darkened, stagnant shade which denotes the despair-stricken
soul. We behold the livid hues of approaching frenzy, or the blacker stain of
settled melancholy! Heloisa’s face is paler than the marble she kneels upon.

In all cases the mind shines through the body; and according as the medium
is dense or transparent, so the light within seems dull or clear.
Advocate as I am for a fine complexion, you must perceive, that it is for
the real, and not the spurious. The foundation of my argument, the skin’s
power of expression, would be entirely lost, were I to tolerate that fictitious,
that dead beauty, which is composed of white paints and enamelling. In the
first place, as all applications of this kind are as a mask on the skin, they
can never, but at a distant glance, impose for a moment on a discerning eye.
But why should I say a discerning eye? No eye that is of the commonest
apprehension can look on a face bedaubed with white paint, pearl powder,
or enamel, and be deceived for a minute into a belief that so inanimate a
“whited wall” is the human skin. No flush of pleasure, no shudder of pain,
no thrilling of hope, can be descried beneath the encrusted mould; all that
passes within is concealed behind the mummy surface. Perhaps the painted
creature may be admired by an artist as a well-executed picture; but no man
will seriously consider her as a handsome woman.
White painting is, therefore, an ineffectual, as well as dangerous practice.
The proposed end is not obtained; and, as poison lurks under every layer,
the constitution wanes in alarming proportion as the supposed charms
increase.
What is said against white paint, does not oppose, with the same force,
the use of red. Merely rouging leaves three parts of the face, and the whole
of the neck and arms, to their natural hues. Hence, the language of the heart,
expressed by the general complexion, is not yet entirely obstructed.
Besides, while all white paints are ruinous to health, (occasioning paralytic
affections, and premature death,) there are some red paints which may be
used with perfect safety.
A little vegetable rouge tinging the cheek of a delicate woman, who, from
ill health or an anxious mind, loses her roses, may be excusable; and so
transparent is the texture of such rouge, (when unadulterated with lead,) that
when the blood does mount to the face, it speaks through the slight
covering, and enhances the fading bloom. But, though the occasional use of
rouge may be tolerated, yet my fair friends must understand that it is only
tolerated. Good sense must so preside over its application, that its tint on
the cheek may always be fainter than that nature’s pallet would have

painted. A violent rouged woman is one of the most disgusting objects to
the eye. The excessive red on the face gives a coarseness to every feature,
and a general fierceness to the countenance, which transforms the elegant
lady of fashion into a vulgar harridan.
While I recommend that the rouge we sparingly permit, should be laid on
with delicacy, my readers must not suppose that I intend such advice as a
means of making the art a deception. It seems to me so slight and so
innocent an apparel of the face, (a kind of decent veil thrown over the
cheek, rendered too eloquent of grief by the pallidness of secret sorrow,)
that I cannot see any shame in the most ingenuous female acknowledging
that she occasionally rouges. It is often, like a cheerful smile on the face of
an invalid, put on to give comfort to an anxious friend.
That our applications to this restorer of our usual looks should not feed,
like a worm, on the bud it affects to brighten, no rouge must ever be
admitted that is impregnated with even the smallest particle of ceruse. It is
the lead which is the poison of white paint; and its mixture with the red
would render that equally noxious.
There are various ways of putting on rouge. Frenchwomen in general,
and those who imitate them, daub it on from the bottom of the side of the
face up to the very eye, even till it meets the lower eye-lash, and creeps all
over the temples. This is a hideous practice. It is obvious that it must
produce deformity instead of beauty, and, as I said before, would
metamorphose the gentlest-looking fair Hebe into a fierce Medusa.
For brunettes, a slight touch of simple carmine on the cheek, in its dry
powder state, is amply sufficient. Taste will teach the hand to soften the
color by due degrees, till it almost imperceptibly blends with the natural hue
of the skin. For fairer complexions, letting down the vivid red of the
carmine with a mixture of fine hair powder, till it suits the general
appearance of the skin, will have the desired effect.
The article of rouge, on the grounds I have mentioned, is the only species
of positive art a woman of integrity or of delicacy can permit herself to use
with her face. Her motives for imitating the bloom of health, may be of the
most honorable nature, and she can with candor avow them. On the reverse,
nothing but selfish vanity, and falsehood of mind, could prevail on a woman
to enamel her skin with white paints, to lacker her lips with vermilion, to

draw the meandering vein through the fictitious alabaster with as fictitious a
dye.
Penciling eye-brows, staining them, &c., are too clumsy tricks of
attempted deception, for any other emotion to be excited in the mind of the
beholder, than contempt for the bad taste and wilful blindness which could
ever deem them passable for a moment. There is a lovely harmony in
nature’s tints, which we seldom attain by our added chromatics. The
exquisitely fair complexion is generally accompanied with blue eyes, light
hair, and light eye-brows and lashes. So far all is right. The delicacy of one
feature is preserved in effect and beauty by the corresponding softness of
the other. A young creature, so formed, appears to the eye of taste like the
azure heavens, seen through the fleecy clouds on which the brightness of
day delights to dwell. But take this fair image of the celestial regions, draw
a black line over her softly-tinctured eyes, stain their beamy fringes with a
sombre hue, and what do you produce? Certainly a fair face with dark eye-
brows! But that feature, which is an embellishment to a brunette, when seen
on the forehead of the fair beauty, becomes, if not an absolute deformity, so
great a drawback from her perfections, that the harmony is gone; and, as a
proof, a painter would immediately turn from the change with disgust.
Nature, in almost every case, is our best guide. Hence the native color of
our own hair is, in general, better adapted to our own complexions than a
wig of a contrary hue. A thing may be beautiful in itself, which, with certain
combinations, may be rendered hideous. For instance, a golden-tressed wig
on the head of a brown woman, makes both ridiculous. By the same rule, all
fantastic tricks played with the mouth or eyes, or motions of the head, are
absurd, and ruinous to beauty. They are solecisms in the works of nature.
In Turkey, it happened to be the taste of one of its great monarchs, to
esteem large and dark-lashed eyes as the most lovely. From that time, all the
fair slaves of that voluptuous region, when nature has not bestowed “the
wild-stag eye in sable ringlets rolling,” supply the deficiency with circles of
antimony; and so, instead of a real charm, they impart a strange artificial
ghastliness to their appearance.
Our countrywomen, in like manner, when a celebrated belle came under
the pencil of Sir Peter Lely, who exhibited to her emulative rivals the sweet
peculiarities of her long and languishing eye, they must needs all have the

same; and not a lady could appear in public, be her visual orbs large or
small, bright or dull, but she must affect the soft sleepiness, the tender and
slowly-moving roll of her subduing exemplar. But though Sir Peter’s gallant
pencil deigned to compliment his numerous sitters by drowning their
strained aspects after the model of the peerless belle, yet, in place of the
nature-stamped look of modest languishment, he could not but often
recognize the disgraceful leer and hideous squint. Let every woman be
content to leave her eyes as she found them, and to make that use of them
which was their design. They were intended to see with, and artlessly
express the feelings of a chaste and benevolent heart. Let them speak this
unsophisticated language, and beauty will beam from the orb which
affectation would have rendered odious.
Analogy of reasoning will bring forward similar remarks with regard to
the movements of the mouth, which many ladies use, not to speak with or to
admit food, but to show dimples and display white teeth. Wherever a desire
for exhibition is discovered, a disposition to disapprove and ridicule arises
in the spectator. The pretensions of the vain are a sort of assumption over
others, which arms the whole world against them. But, after all, “What are
the honors of a painted skin?” I hope it will be distinctly understood by my
fair friends, that I do not, by any means, give a general license to painting;
on the contrary, that even rouge should only be resorted to in cases of
absolute necessity.

GENERAL THOUGHTS ON DRESS AND PERSONAL
DECORATION.

“Costly your habit as your purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy,
For the apparel oft proclaims the woman.”

Shakspeare.
Every person of just observation, who looks back on the fashions of our
immediate ancestors, and compares their style of dress with that of the
present times, will not hesitate to acknowledge the evident improvement in
ease and gracefulness. When I say this, I mean to eulogize the taste which
yet prevails with persons of real judgment, to maintain the ease and
gracefulness of our assumed Grecian mode, against a new race of stay-
makers, corset-inventors, &c., who have just armed themselves with
whalebone, steel, and buckram, to the utter destruction of all the naturally-
elegant shapes which fall into their hands.
Just before this attempted counter-revolution in the world of fashion, we
found that our belles had gradually exploded the stiffness and formality
which distinguished the brocaded dame of 1700, from the lawn-robed fair
of the nineteenth century. In former ages it seemed requisite that every lady
should cut out her garments by a certain erected standard. All seemed in a
livery. One mode for gown, cap, and hat prevailed; and though the materials
might be more costly in one than another, the outline was the same; and
thus peculiar taste and fine form were lost, in the general prescription of
one reigning costume.
But in our days, an Englishwoman has the extensive privilege of arraying
herself in whatever garb may best suit her figure or her fancy. The fashions
of every nation and of every era are open to her choice. One day she may
appear as the Egyptian Cleopatra, then a Grecian Helen; next morning, the
Roman Cornelia; or, if these styles be too august for her taste, there are
sylphs, goddesses, nymphs of every region, in earth or air, ready to lend her
their wardrobe. In short, no land or age is permitted to withhold its costume
from the adoption of an Englishwoman of fashion.

“Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here
The various offsprings of the world appear;
This casket India’s glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.”
With such a variety to choose from, she has no excuse, if she unite not
the excellences of them all. It was so that the sculptor of Paphos formed the
“beauteous statue that enchanted the world.” And in like manner female
taste accomplishes its object. A judicious dresser will select from each
mode that which is most distinguishable for utility and grace, and,
combining, adopt them to advantage. This is the art which every woman
who casts a thought on these subjects, ought to endeavor to attain.
Elegant dressing is not found in expense; money without judgment may
load, but never can adorn. You may show profusion without grace: You may
cover a neck with pearls, a head with jewels, hands and arms with rings,
bracelets, and trinkets, and yet produce no effect, but having emptied some
merchant’s counter upon your person. The best chosen dress is that which
so harmonizes with the figure as to make the raiment pass unobserved. The
result of the finest toilet should be an elegant woman, not an elegantly
dressed woman. Where a perfect whole is intended, it is a sign of defect in
the execution, when the details first present themselves to observation.
In short, the secret of dressing lies in simplicity, and a certain adaptation
to your figure, your rank, your circumstances. To dress well on these
principles—and they are the only just ones—does not require that
extravagant attention to so trivial an object, as is usually exhibited by
persons who make the toilet a study. When ladies place the spell of their
attraction in their clothes, we generally see them arrayed in robes of a
thousand makes and dyes, and curiously constructed of materials brought
from, Heaven knows where. Thus, much time, thought, and wealth, are
wasted on a comparatively worthless object. To lavish many of the precious
hours of life in the invention and arrangement of dress, is as criminal an
offence as to exhaust the finances of your husband or parents by a thriftless
expenditure on its component parts.
The taste I wish to inculcate, is that nicely-poised estimation of things,
which shows it “worth our while to do well, what it is ever worth our while
to do.” This disposition originates in a correct and delicate mind, and forms

a judgment which makes elegance inseparable from propriety; and
extending itself from great objects to small, reaches the most apparently
insignificant; and thus, even in the change of the morning and evening
attire, displays to the considerate observer a very intelligible index of the
wearer’s well-regulated mind.
“Show me a lady’s dressing-room,” says a certain writer, “and I will tell
you what manner of woman she is.” Chesterfield, also, is of opinion, that a
sympathy goes through every action of our lives: he declares, that he could
not help conceiving some idea of people’s sense and character from the
dress in which they appeared when introduced to him. He was so great an
advocate for pleasing externals, that he often said, he would rather see a
young person too much than too little dressed, excess, on the fopish side,
wearing off with time and reflection; but if a youth be negligent at twenty, it
is probable he will be a sloven at forty, and disgustingly dirty at fifty.
However this may be with the other sex, I beg leave to observe, that I never
yet met with a woman whose general style of dress was chaste, elegant, and
appropriate, that I did not find, on further acquaintance, to be, in disposition
and mind, an object to admire and love.
This correspondence between the thoughts and the raiment being
established, what was before insignificant becomes of consequence; and,
being rightly understood, good sense will be as careful not to disparage her
discretion, by extravagant dress, as she would to evince a sordid mind, by
dirt and rags.
I think I see you, my friends, smile, incredulous, at the last sentence.
What gentlewoman, you exclaim, who is above the most abject pecuniary
embarrassments, can ever have chance of being so apparelled? A desire of
singularity is a sufficient answer. There is a race of women, who, priding
themselves on their superior rank, or wealth, or talents, affect to despise
what they deem the adventitious aids of dress. Their appearance, in
consequence, is frequently as ridiculous as disgusting. When this folly is
seen in female authors, or what is much the same thing, ladies professing a
particularly literary taste, we can at once trace its motives,—a conceited
negligence of outward attractions, and a determination to raise themselves
in the opinions of men, by displaying a contempt for what they deem the
vain occupations of meaner souls. Wishing to be thought superior to
founding any regard on external ornament, they forget external decency;

and by slatternliness and affectation, render what is called a learned woman,
a kind of scare-crow to her own sex, and a laughing-stock to the other. This
error is not so common now with bookish ladies as it was in the beginning
of the last century. Then our sex did, indeed, show that “a little learning is a
dangerous thing.” They did not imbibe sufficient to imbue them with a
sense of its real properties, to show them causes and effects, to make them
understand themselves, and close the book in humility. They, poor short-
sighted creatures! exchanged the innocent ignorance of Eve for the
empoisoned apple, which, under the cheat of displaying knowledge, fills the
eater with a vain self-conceit, while it more openly exposes her mental
nakedness to every eye.
The absurdity of their deductions is so obvious, that one wonders how
any woman could fall into such an error. Who among them but would think
it the height of folly to place over the door of a museum, to which the
proprietor wished to attract visitors, the effigy of a monster, so disgusting as
to deter men from entering to see what might otherwise have afforded them
much pleasure? Such effigies might the slip-shod muses of the days of Anne
have given of themselves; but most of the modern female votaries of
Minerva, aware of the advantages of a prepossessing appearance, mingle
with their incense to the Goddess a few flowers to the Paphian Graces; and,
that they gain by the devotion, none who have been admitted to the
acquaintance of our British Sapphos and Corinnas, can deny.
There is another class of persons, who neglect their exterior on account
of the consequence they derive from their rank; but instances on such a plea
are few, in comparison with the insolent slovenliness of the opposite sex,
when, springing from the lower degrees in society, they amass or acquire
large fortunes. They aim at notoriety; and common means, such as expense
and show, not raising them into an eclat beyond their equally rich
contemporaries, ambition leads them to seek notice by the assumption of a
garb of almost pauper negligence. I remember, some years since, when on a
visit at a large seaport town in the north of England, to have been attracted
by seeing at the door of a handsome house in one of the principal streets an
elegant modern chariot. I stopped, and, to my surprise, saw step into it an
old man of the meanest and most dirty appearance. A few days afterwards,
while viewing the docks with a gentleman who was an inhabitant of the
place, I observed the same wretched-looking person conversing familiarly

with a man of the first consequence in the town. I inquired of my friend the
name and business of the shabby old fellow, and received the following
brief answer. He had been taken, when a boy, from very indigent parents
residing in a northern village; and, being a smart lad, was employed in the
drudgery of a banking-house belonging to his benefactors. By assiduous
application, and a deep cunning, aided by what is vulgarly called good luck,
he gradually advanced himself to be one of the firm. Of course, his fortune
then rose with the house, and his wealth, at the time I saw him, was
computed at upwards of a hundred thousand pounds. Yet I am sure that an
old-clothesman would not have given half-a-crown for the whole of the
apparel (or rather rags) upon his back.
Now, as it is too often the custom with people, in forming an opinion,
seldom to go beyond the surface, this modern Avaro was, by many, termed
a man without pride! Few gave a guess at the real motive of all this studied
negligence; but those who investigate the human character, and trace
actions to the secret springs of the heart, saw, in this inattention to personal
decency, the very acmé of personal pride. I shall prove my position by
repeating the usual reply of this old man, when any of his acquaintance
ventured to inquire why he wore such tattered garments. “Why,” he would
answer, “were I to dress as smart as other people, no one would know T. W.
from another man.”
Men may fall into this mistaken road to distinction, but women who have
suddenly become wealthy seldom do. A passion for dress is so common
with the sex, that it ought not to be very surprising, when opulence, vanity,
and bad taste meet, that we should find extravagance and tawdry profusion
the fruits of the union. And it would be well if a humor for expensive dress
were always confined to the fortunate daughters of Plutus; but we too often
find this ruinous spirit in women of slender means, and then, what ought to
be one of the embellishments of life is turned into a splendid mischief.
Alas! my friends, it must come under your own observations, that often
does the foolish virgin, or infatuated matron, sell her peace or honor for a
ring or a scarf!
A woman of principle and prudence must be consistent in the style and
quality of her attire; she must be careful that her expenditure does not
exceed the limits of her allowance; she must be aware, that it is not the girl
who lavishes the most money on her apparel that is the best arrayed.

Frequent instances have I known, where young women, with a little good
taste, ingenuity, and economy, have maintained a much better appearance
than ladies of three times their fortune. No treasury is large enough to
supply indiscriminate profusion; and scarcely any purse is too scanty for the
uses of life, when managed by a careful hand. Few are the situations in
which a woman can be placed, whether she be married or single, where
some attention to thrift is not expected. High rank requires adequate means
to support its consequence—ostentatious wealth, a superabundance to
maintain its domineering pretensions; and the middle class, when virtue is
its companion, looks to economy to allow it to throw its mite into the lap of
charity.
Hence we see, that hardly any woman, however related, can have a right
to independent, uncontrolled expenditure; and that, to do her duty in every
sense of the word, she must learn to understand and exercise the graces of
economy. This quality will be a gem in her husband’s eyes; for, though most
of the money-getting sex like to see their wives well dressed, yet, trust me,
my fair friends, they would rather owe that pleasure to your taste than to
their pockets!
Costliness being, then, no essential principle in real elegance, I shall
proceed to give you a few hints on what are the distinguishing
circumstances of a well-ordered toilet.
As the beauty of form and complexion is different in different women,
and is still more varied, according to the ages of the fair subjects of
investigation; so the styles in dress, while simplicity is the soul of all, must
assume a character corresponding with the wearer.
The seasons of life should be arrayed like those of the year. In the spring
of youth, when all is lovely and gay, then, as the soft green, sparkling in
freshness, bedecks the earth; so, light and transparent robes, of tender
colors, should adorn the limbs of the young beauty. If she be of the Hebe
form, warm weather should find her veiled in fine muslin, lawn, gauzes,
and other lucid materials. To suit the character of her figure, and to accord
with the prevailing mode and just taste together, her morning robes should
be of a length sufficiently circumscribed as not to impede her walking; but
on no account must they be too short; for, when any design is betrayed of
showing the foot or ankle, the idea of beauty is lost in that of the wearer’s

odious indelicacy. On the reverse, when no show of vanity is apparent in the
dress—when the lightly-flowing drapery, by unsought accident, discovers
the pretty buskined foot or taper ankle, a sense of virgin timidity, and of
exquisite loveliness together, strikes upon the senses; and Admiration, with
a tender sigh, softly whispers, “The most resistless charm is modesty!”
In Thomson’s exquisite portrait of Lavinia, the prominent feature is
modesty. “She was beauty’s self,” indeed, but-then she was “thoughtless of
beauty;” and though her eyes were sparkling, “bashful modesty” directed
them
“Still on the ground dejected, darting all
Their humid beams into the blooming flowers.”
The morning robe should cover the arms and the bosom, nay even the
neck. And if it be made tight to the shape, every symmetrical line is
discovered with a grace so decent, that vestals, without a blush, might adopt
the chaste apparel. This simple garb leaves to beauty all her empire; no
furbelows, no heavy ornaments, load the figure, warp the outlines, and
distract the attention. All is light, easy, and elegant; and the lovely wearer,
“with her glossy ringlets loosely bound,” moves with the Zephyrs on the
airy wing of youth and innocence.
Her summer evening dress may be of a still more gossamer texture; but it
must still preserve the same simplicity, though its gracefully-diverging folds
may fall like the mantle of Juno, in clustering drapery about her steps.
There they should meet the white slipper
“—of the fairy foot,
Which shines like snow, and falls on earth as mute.”
In this dress, her arms, and part of her neck and bosom may be unveiled;
but only part. The eye of maternal decorum should draw the virgin zone to
the limit where modesty would bid it rest.
Where beauty is, ornaments are unnecessary; and where it is not, they are
unavailing. But as gems and flowers are handsome in themselves, and when
tastefully disposed doubly so, a beautiful young woman, if she chooses to
share her empire with the jeweller and the florist, may, not inelegantly,
decorate her neck, arms, and head, with a string of pearls, and a band of
flowers.

Female youth, of airy forms and fair complexions, ought to reject, as too
heavy for their style of figure, the use of gems. Their ornaments should
hardly ever exceed the natural or imitated flowers of the most delicate
tribes. The snow-drop, lily of the valley, violet, primrose, myrtle, Provence
rose,—these and their resemblances, are embellishments which harmonize
with their gaiety and blooming years. The colors of their garments, when
not white, should be the most tender shades of green, yellow, pink, blue,
and lilac. These when judiciously selected, or mingled, array the graceful
wearer, like another Iris, breathing youth and loveliness.
Should a young woman, of majestic character, inquire for appropriate
apparel, she will find it to correspond with her graver and more dignified
mien. Her robes should always be long and flowing, and more ample in
their folds than those of her gayer sister. Their substance should also be
thicker, and of a soberer color. White is becoming to all characters, and not
less so to Juno than to Venus; but when colors are to be worn, I recommend
to the lady of majestic deportment, to choose the fuller shades of yellow,
purple, crimson, scarlet, black, and gray. The materials of her dress in
summer, cambrics, muslins, sarcenets; in winter, satins, velvets, broadcloth,
&c. Her ornaments should be embroidery of gold, silver, and precious
stones, with fillets and diadems of jewels, and waving plumes.
The materials for the winter dresses of majestic forms, and lightly-
graceful ones, may be of nearly similar texture, only differing, when made
up, in amplitude and abundance of drapery. Satin, Genoa velvet, Indian
silks, and kerseymere, may all be fashioned into as becoming an apparel for
the slender figure as for the more embonpoint; and the warmth they afford
is highly needful to preserve health during the cold and damps of winter.
When it is so universally acknowledged, the indispensable necessity of
keeping the body in a just temperature between heat and cold, I cannot but
be astonished at the little attention that is paid to so momentous a subject by
the people of this climate. I wonder that a sense of personal comfort, aided
by the well-founded conviction that health is the only preservative of
beauty, and lengthener of youth, that it does not impel women to prefer
utility before the absurd whims of an unreasonable fashion.
To wear gossamer dresses, with bare necks and naked arms, in a hard
frost, has been the mode in this country, and unless a principle is made
against it, may be so again, to the utter wretchedness of them, who, so

arraying their youth, lay themselves open to the untimely ravages of
rheumatisms, palsies, consumptions, and death.
While fine taste, as well as fashion, decrees that the beautiful outline of a
well-proportioned form shall be seen in the contour of a nicely-adapted
dress, the divisions of that dress must be few and simple. But, though the
hoop and quilted petticoat are no longer suffered to shroud in hideous
obscurity one of the loveliest works in nature, yet all intermediate covering
is not to be banished. Modesty, on one hand, and Health, on the other, still
maintain the law of “fold on fold.”
Some of our fair dames appear, summer and winter, with no other shelter
from sun or frost, than one single garment of muslin or silk over their
chemise—if they wear one! but that is often dubious. The indelicacy of this
mode need not be pointed out; and yet, O shame! it is most generally
followed. However, common as the crime is, (for who will say that it is not
a sin against modesty?) it is quickly visited with its punishment. It loses its
aim, if it hopes to attract the admiration of manly worth. No eye but that of
a libertine can look upon so wanton a figure with any other sensations than
those of disgust and contempt: and the end of all her arts being lost, the
certainty of an early old age, chronic pains, and deeply-furrowed wrinkles,
is thus incurred in vain.
No woman, even in the warmest flush of youth, ought to be prodigal of
her charms; she should not “unmask her beauties to the moon;” or unduly
expose the vital fluid, which animates her frame with life and joy. A
momentary blast from the east may pierce her filmy robes, wither her
bloom, and lay her low.
The Chemise (now too frequently banished) ought to be held as sacred by
the modest fair as the vestal veil. No fashion should be able to strip her of
that decent covering; in short, woman should consider it as the sign of her
delicacy, as the pledge of honor to shelter her from the gaze of unhallowed
eyes.
This indispensable vesture being once more appropriated to its ancient
use, we shall next speak of the stays, or corsets. They must be light and
flexible, yielding to the shape, while they support it. In warm weather, my
fair reader should wear under her gown and slip a light cotton petticoat;
these few habiliments are sufficient to impart the softening line of modesty

to the defined outline of the form. Health, also, is preserved by their
opposing the immediate influence of the atmosphere; and none will deny,
that enough of female charms are thus displayed, to gratify the quick,
discerning eye of taste.
During the chilling airs of spring and autumn, the cotton petticoat should
give place to fine flannel; and in the rigid season of winter, another addition
must be made, by rendering the outer garments warmer in their original
texture: for instance, substituting satins, velvets, and rich stuffs, for the
lighter materials of summer. And besides these, the use of fur is not only a
salutary, but a magnificent and graceful appendage to dress.
Having laid it down as a general principle, that the fashion of the raiment
must correspond with that of the figure, and that every sort of woman will
not look equally well in the same style of apparel, it will not be difficult to
make you understand, that a handsome person may make a freer use of
fancy in her ornaments than an ordinary one. Beauty gives effect to all
things; it is the universal embellisher, the setting which makes common
crystal shine as diamonds. In short, fashion does not adorn beauty, but
beauty fashion. Hence, I must warn Delia, that if she be not cast in so
perfect a mould as Celia, she must not flatter herself that she can supply the
deficiency by gayer or more sumptuous attire. Whims in dress may possibly
pass with her, who, “in Parsian mode, or Indian guise, is still the fairest
fair!” But caprices of this sort, in a plain woman, only render her defects
more conspicuous; and she, who might have been regarded as a very
pleasing girl, in an unobtrusive robe of simple elegance, is ridiculed and
despised when descried in the inappropriate plumage of fancy and
decoration.
Many men, while listening to the conversation of an ordinary, but
sensible young woman, would never see that her hair was harsh, and of a
bad color, were it not interwoven with a wreath of roses. They would not
perceive the brownness and want of symmetry in her bosom, did not the
sparkling necklace attract their eye to the spot. Neither would it strike them
that her hands were coarse and red, did not the pearl bracelets and circles of
rings tell them that she meant they should vie with Celia’s rose-tipped
fingers.

As I recommend a restrained and quiet mode of dress to plain women, so,
in gradation as the lovely of my sex advance towards the vale of years, I
counsel them to assume a graver habit and a less vivacious air. Cheerfulness
is becoming to all times of life, but sportiveness belongs to youth alone; and
when the meridian or the decline of our days affects it, is ever heavy and
out of place.
Let me show you, my fair friends, by conducting you into the Pantheon
of ancient Rome, the images of yourselves at the different stages of your
lives. First, behold that lovely Hebe; her robes are like the air, her motion is
on the zephyr’s wing: that you may be till you are twenty. Then comes the
beautiful Diana. The chaste dignity of the pure intelligence within pervades
the whole form, and the very drapery which enfolds it harmonizes with the
modest elegance, the buoyant health, which gives elasticity and grace to
every limb: here, then, you see yourselves from twenty to thirty. At that
majestic age, when the woman of mind looks round upon the world; back
on the events which have past, and calmly forward to those which may be
to come; all within ought to be settled on the firm basis of religion and
sound judgment; and either as a Juno or a Minerva she stands forth in the
power of beauty and of wisdom. At this period she lays aside the flowers of
youth, and arrays herself in the majesty of sobriety, or in the grandeur of
simple magnificence.
Contradictory as the two last terms may at first appear, they are
consistent; and a glance on the works of Phidias, and of his best imitators,
will sufficiently prove their beautiful union. Long is the reign of this
commanding epoch of a woman’s age; for from thirty to fifty she may most
respectably maintain her station on this throne of matron excellence. But at
that period, when she has numbered half a century, then it becomes her to
throw aside “the wimple and the crisping-iron, the ornament of silver, and
the ornament of gold,” and gracefully acknowledging her entrance into the
vale of years, to wrap herself in her mantle of gray, and move gently down
till she passes through its extremest bourn to the mansions of immortality.
Ah! who is there amongst us, who, having once viewed the reality of this
picture, would exchange such blessed relinquishment of the world and all
its vanities, for the bolstered back, enamelled cheek, and be-wigged head of
a modern old woman, just trembling on the verge of the grave, and yet a
candidate for the flattery of men?

It has been most wisely said, (and it would be well if the waning queens
of beauty would adopt the reflection,) that there is a time for everything! We
may add, that there is a time to be young, a time to be old; a time to be
loved, a time to be revered; a time to seek life, and a time to be ready to lay
it down.
She who best knows how to fashion herself to these inevitable changes is
the only truly, only lastingly fair. Her beauty is in the mind, and shown in
action; and when men cease to admire the woman, they do better, they
revere the saint.

ON THE PECULIARITIES OF DRESS, WITH REFERENCE
TO THE STATION OF THE WEARER.

“Dress drains our cellar dry,
And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires,
And introduces hunger, frost, and wo,
Where peace and hospitality might reign.”

Cowper.
As there is a propriety in adapting your dress to the different seasons of
your life, and the peculiar character of your figure, there is likewise a
necessity that it should correspond with the station you hold in society.
This is a subject not less of a moral concern than it is a matter of taste.
By the universality of finery, and expensive articles in dress, ranks are not
only rendered undistinguishable, but the fortunes of moderate families, and
of industrious tradesmen, are brought to ruin: the sons become sharpers, and
the virtue of the wives and daughters too often follows in the same
destruction.
It is not from a proud wish to confine elegance to persons of quality, that
I contend for less extravagant habits in the middle and lower orders of
people; it is a conviction of the evil which their vanity produces, that impels
me to condemn in toto the present levelling and expensive mode.
A tradesman’s wife is now as sumptuously arrayed as a countess; and a
waiting-maid as gaily as her lady. I speak not of our merchants, who, like
those of Florence under the Medici family, have the fortunes of princes, and
may therefore decorate the fair partners of their lives with the rich produce
of the divers countries they visit; but I animadvert on our retail
shopkeepers, our linen-drapers, upholsterers, &c. who, not content with
gold and silver baubles, trick out their dames in jewels! No wonder that
these men load their consciences with dishonest profits, or make their last
appearance in the newspaper as insolvent or felo de se!
Should the woman of moderate fortune be so ignorant of the principles of
real elegance as to sigh for the splendid apparels of the court, let her receive
as an undeniable truth, that mediocrity of circumstances being able to afford

clean and simple raiment, furnishes all that is essential for taste to improve
into perfect elegance. Riches and splendor will attract notice, and may often
excite admiration; but it is the privilege of propriety and sweet retiring
grace alone to rivet the eye, and take captive the heart.
“Many there are who seem to shun all care,
And with a pleasing negligence ensnare.”
The fashion of educating all ranks of young women alike, is the cause
why all ranks of women attempt to dress alike. If the brazier’s daughter is
taught to sing, dance, and play, like the heiress to an earldom, we must not
be surprised that she will also emulate the decorations of her rival. We see
her imitate the coronet on Lady Mary’s brows; and though Miss Molly may
possibly not be able to have her’s of gems, foil-stones produce a similar
effect; then she looks for rings, bracelets, armlets, to give appropriate grace
to the elegant arts she has learnt to practise; and when she is thus arrayed,
she plays away the wanton and the fool, till some libertine of fortune buys
her either for a wife or a mistress.
Were girls of the plebeian classes brought up in the praiseworthy habits
of domestic duties; had they learned how to manage a house, how to
economize and produce comfort at the least expense at their father’s frugal
yet hospitable table, we should not hear of dancing-masters, and music-
masters, of French and Italian masters; they would have no time for them.
We should not see gaudy robes and glittering trinkets dangling behind the
counter, or shining at a Sunday ordinary; we should not be told of the
seduction, or ruin of those,
“Whose modest looks the cottage might adorn,
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn.”
The appearance of these young women would not attract the flatterer; and
their simple hearts know not the desires of luxury and vanity.
After having drawn this agreeable picture of her who has well chosen, I
will leave this modern daughter of industry to her discreet and virtuous
simplicity; and once more turn to her whose fortune and station render
greater change and expense in apparel not only admissible but
commendable. A woman with adequate means, when she fills an extensive

wardrobe, encourages the arts and manufactures of her country, and
replenishes the scanty purse of many a laborious family.
At this period of universal talent, articles of dress may be purchased at a
price so insignificant as hardly to be named, or at the vast cost of half a
fortune. A pretty muslin gown may be bought by the village girl for a few
shillings; while a robe of the same material, but of a finer quality, cannot be
purchased by a lady of rank for less than as many guineas. Indian muslin
wrought with gold or silver is nearly as costly as the stately brocades of our
ancestors, but it is infinitely more elegant.
Indeed, when we look back upon their heavy fashions, we cannot but see,
that in almost every respect the advantage of the change is on our side. With
the stiffness of cloth of gold and embroidered tissues, have also disappeared
the enormous pile of hair, furbelows, feathers, diamond towers, windmills,
&c. which a certain witty poet used to denominate “the building of the
head.” Now, easy tresses, the shining braid, the flowing ringlet confined by
the antique comb, or bodkin, give graceful specimens of the simple taste of
modern beauty. Nothing can correspond more elegantly with the
untrammelled drapery of our newly-adopted classic raiment than this
undecorated coiffure of nature.
While we find that the pious Bishop Latimer remonstrated with the
females of his time against the monstrous superfluity of their “roundabouts,
artificial hips,” &c. &c. and recommended to their use the “honest single
garment;”—our moralists, equally pious, take up the argument on the
contrary side, and justly condemn the too adhesive and transparent robe
worn by our contemporary belles! On this subject we must dissent from the
venerable reformer of the sixteenth century; and agree with those of the
nineteenth, that the single garment (as the texture now usually is) is not a
meet covering for a christian damsel.
I am sorry to be obliged to call to your observation, my gentle friends,
that the modern fair have deviated widely from that medium between the
Bacchante and the Vestal, which a discreet candidate for admiration would
wish to preserve. The nature of man is prone to extremes; and flying from
the heavy farthingale and the stuffed petticoat, women assume almost the
Spartan guise; and, not meeting minds in the opposite sex as pure as those

in Lacedæmon, no wonder that the chaste matron, called upon to foretell the
consequence, should remain silent, and veil her head.
“Good sense,” says La Rochefoucault, “should be the test of all rule,
whether ancient or modern. Whatever is incompatible with good sense must
be false.” Modesty should, on the same principle, be the test of the
propriety of all personal apparel or ornament; for whatever is incompatible
with her ordinances, must degrade and betray.
Hence you will perceive, my young readers, that in no case a true friend
or lover would wish you to discover to the eye more of the “form divine”
than can be indistinctly descried through the mysterious involvements of, at
least, three successive folds of drapery. Love, friendship, and real taste, are
alike delicate.
To the exposure of the bosom and back, as some ladies display those
parts of their person, what shall we say? This mode (like every other which
is carried to excess and indiscriminately followed) is not only repugnant to
decency, but most exceedingly disadvantageous to the charms of nine
women out of ten. The bosom and shoulders of a very young and fair girl
may be displayed without exciting much displeasure or disgust; the
beholder regards the too prodigal exhibition, not as the act of the youthful
innocent, but as the effect of accident, or perhaps the designed exposure of
some ignorant dresser. But when a woman, grown to the age of discretion,
of her own choice “unveils her beauties to the sun and moon,” then, from
even an Helen’s charms the sated eye turns away loathing.
Were we even in a frantic and impious passion to set virtue aside, policy
should direct our damsels to be more sparing of their attractions. An
unrestrained indulgence of the eye robs imagination of her power, and
prevents her consequent influence on the heart. And if this be the case
where real beauty is exposed, how much more subversive of its aim must be
the studied display of an ordinary or deformed figure!
Judgment, as well as decency, declares, that it is sufficient in the evening
and full-dress to disrobe the back of the neck to the top of the delicate
undulation on the rise of the shoulder. Women, according to the fineness of
their skins and proportions, must accept or decline the privileges which
modesty grants. It is preposterous for her who is of a brown, dingy, or
speckled complexion, to disarray her neck and arms, as her fairer rival may.

A clear brunette has as much liberty in this respect as the fairest; but not so
the muddy-skinned and ill-formed. A candid consideration of our
pretensions on these subjects, and an impartial judgment, must decide our
style of apparel, and consequently our respectability with the discerning.
Perhaps it is necessary to remind my reader that custom regulates the
veiling or unveiling the figure, according to different periods in the day. In
the morning, the arms and bosom must be completely covered to the throat
and wrists. From the dinner-hour to the termination of the day, the arms, to
a graceful height above the elbow, may be bare; and the neck and shoulders
unveiled as far as delicacy will allow.
As Cicero said of action, so say ye of the essentials of your charms. What
is the eloquence of your beauty?—Modesty! What is its first argument?—
Modesty! What is its second?—Modesty! What is its third?—Modesty!—
What is its peroration, the winding up of all its charms, the striking spell
that binds the heart of man to her forever?—Modesty!!!—In the words of
Moore,
“Let that which charms all other eyes
Seem worthless in your own!”
Modesty is all in all; for it comprises the beauties of the mind as well as
those of the body; and happy is he who finds her!
The bosom, which nature has formed with exquisite symmetry in itself,
and admirable adaptation to the parts of the figure to which it is united, has
been transformed into a shape, and transplanted to a place, which deprives
it of its original beauty and harmony with the rest of the person. This
hideous metamorphosis has been effected by means of newly-invented
stays, or corsets, which, by an extraordinary construction and force of
material, force the figure of the wearer into whatever form the artist pleases.
Curiosity may incline you to wish to know something better of these
buckram machines, that you may form an idea of their intention, use, or
rather inutility. I will satisfy you by describing them to the best of my
power.
The leader in this arming phalanx is usually called long-stay. And its
announcement to the female world, if not by drum or trumpet, furnishes not
only much matter for oratory in the advertisement, but a no inconsiderable

fund of merriment to the readers of these curious performances. For
instance, “Mrs. and Miss L. P. have willed it, and it is done at their house,”
&c. &c. Here follows a list of their improved long stay, pregnant stay,
divorces, &c. &c. O! female delicacy, where is thy blush, when thou lookest
on such exposure of the chaste reserves of thy person!
The first time my eyes met these words so coupled, I was seized with that
honest shuddering which every delicate woman ought to feel at seeing the
parts and situations of her person which modesty bids her conceal, thus
dragged before the imagination of the opposite sex. The pure must read it
with the frown of disgust—the impure with the smile of ridicule. To this
moment, though I find that nothing disrespectful to modesty was meant by
the advertisement, I cannot approve of the terms in which it is written; for it
is my opinion, (and I am so happy as to be supported in it by the sanction of
the wisest moralists,) that, rob woman of her delicate reserves, and you take
from her one of the best strong holds of her chastity. You deprive her of her
sweet attractive mysteries; you lay open to the eye of love the arcana of her
toilet, the infirmities of her nature; the enchantment is broken, and “the
bloom of young desire, the purple light of the soul’s enthusiasm,” expire at
the disclosure.
To please my still curious readers, I will still further displease myself,
and enter more circumstantially into a detail of these strange appendages to
a female wardrobe.
But before I proceed with my remarks on the long stay, (the ringleader of
the rest,) I will so far rescue the intention of its constructors from any
design to excite improper ideas by the words of their advertisement, as to
explain to you the proposed usefulness of the inventions denominated
pregnant stay, and divorces.
The first is a corset or stay of dimity, or jean, or silk, reaching from the
shoulders down to the waist, and over the hips, to the complete
envelopement of the body. It is rendered of more than ordinary power by
elastic bones, &c. which, introduced between the lining and covering of the
stay, bring it into something of the consistency and shape of an ancient
warrior’s hauberk. This new-fashioned coat of mail for the fair sex is so
constructed, as to compress and reduce to the shape desired the natural
prominence of the female figure in a state of fruitfulness. Some women,

who are bold enough to wear this Procrustean garb during every stage of
their pregnancy, affirm that it preserves their shape without injury to their
state of increase. However this may be with a few hardy individuals, I
profess myself no proselyte to the innovation, as it must necessarily put a
degree of restraint upon the operations of nature, very likely to produce bad
effects both on the mother and the child.
Support and confinement to an overstrained part are two different things;
the one is beneficial, the other destructive. And this I can assure my readers,
that I ever have remarked those married women who have longest
maintained their virgin forms were those who, in a state of maternal
increase, observed a proper medium between a too relaxed and a too
contracted boddice.
Nature in these concerns is our best guide; and when she dictates to us to
provide against the possible disagreeable consequences of any of her
operations, it is well to obey her; but when a fastidious, and, allow me to
say, an indelicate, regard to personal charms would excite you to brace with
ribs of whalebone the soft mould of your unborn infant; or when it has, in
spite of these arts, burst its prison-house alive, you seek to deprive it of the
nourishment your breast prepares—then remember you perform not the
duty of a mother, but show yourself rather egregiously guilty of wantonness
and unpardonable cruelty.
No person living can feel a more lively admiration than that which
animates me at the sight of a beautiful form,
—“rife
With all we can imagine of the sky.”
I behold in it the work of the most perfect being—the accomplishment of
one of his fairest designs. He seems to show in earthy mould the lovely
transcript of the angels of heaven: she looks, she breathes, of innocence and
sweet unconscious beauty. But when I cast my eyes on women issuing from
the house of a modern manufacturer of shapes; when I see the functions of
nature impeded by bands and ligatures; when I behold the abode of virgin
modesty thrust forward to the gaze of the libertine; when I observe the pains
taken to attract his eye,—I turn away disgusted, and blush for my sex.

Vile as these meretricious arts are, they are not less dangerous to health
than to morals. The constant pressure of such hard substances as
whalebone, steel, &c. upon so susceptible a part as the bosom, is very
likely, in the course of a very short time, to produce all the horrid
consequences of abscesses, cancers, &c.: on their miseries I need not to
descant.
On the long stay I shall now make a few remarks, arising from the
observations I have been enabled to make on the ladies of various ages and
figures whom I have known wear it. To the woman whose waning charms
set in an exuberance of flesh, perhaps the support of this adventitious aid is
an advantage. But in that case its stiffening should rather be cord quilted in
the lining, or very thin whalebone, than either steel or iron. In all situations,
the boddice should be flexible to the motion of the body and the undulations
in the shape; and it should never be felt to press upon any part.
Thus far we may tolerate the adoption of this buckram suit for elderly, or
excessively embonpoint ladies; but for the growing girl (whom, I am sorry
to say, mothers not unfrequently imprison in these machines,) it is both
unrequired and mischievous.
Before nature has completed her work in the perfection of the youthful
figure, she is checked in her progress by the impediment which the valves,
bands, &c. of the long stay throw in her way. Those finely-rounded points
which mark the distinction and the grace of the female form, and which the
artist, enamored of beauty, delights to delineate with the nicest accuracy,
are, by the constant pressure of these stays, rendered indistinct, and in a
short time are entirely destroyed.
Let, then, the long stay be restricted to the too abundant mass of fattening
matronhood; so may art restrain the excesses, not of nature, but of disease.
Unwieldly flesh was never yet seen in a perfectly healthy person. It
generally arises either from intemperance overloading the functions of life,
or dissipation decomposing them.
Let the padded corset rectify the defects of the deformed; but where
nature has given the outline of a well-constructed form, forbear to traverse
her designs. Youth should be left to spring up, unconfined, like the young
cedar; and when the hand of man, or accident, does not distort the pliant

stem, it will grow erect and firm, spreading its beautiful and cheerful shade
over the heads of its planters.

OF THE DETAIL OF DRESS.

“We have run
Through every change, that fancy at the loom
Exhausted has had genius to supply;
And, studious of mutation still, discard
A real elegance a little used
For monstrous novelty and strange disguise.”

Cowper.
There are few things in which our sex can discover more taste than in the
choice of the apparel which may best accord with their several styles of
figures and features; but we frequently see the direct opposite of good
judgment in their selections, and behold between the person and the attire a
complete and laughable incongruity.
Some women will actually disguise and disfigure themselves, rather than
not appear in the prevailing fashion, which, though advantageous to one
character of face, may have the direct contrary effect with another. I hinted
at this in the earlier part of this dissertation; now I come closer to my
subject, intending to enter into a minute detail of what ought or ought not to
be worn by women of different moulds and complexions.
If Daphne have the features of a Siddons, and Amaryllis those of a
Jordan, the style which agrees with the one must ill accord with the other.
The like harmony must be maintained between the complexion and the
colors we wear; for it is in these minutiæ which, like the nice and almost
imperceptible touches of the ingenious artist, produce a complete and
faultless whole. That a handsome woman may disfigure herself by an
injudicious choice or disposition of her attire; and a plain one counteract the
errors of nature, so as to render herself at least agreeable, almost every
experienced observer has witnessed. We may therefore conclude, that
beauty with a bad taste is far less desirable than a good taste without beauty.
“What an awkward creature is that!” said a gentleman to me the other
evening at a supper, and pointing to a slatternly beauty who sat opposite,
with her chin nearly reposing on her bosom, and her shoulders drawn up

almost to her ears. “Yonder is a very elegant woman!” observed he,
directing my attention to a lady who, critically considered, was rather
ordinary; but by her judicious style of dress, her unstudied graces of
deportment, claimed universal admiration.
To support my arguments with those of a lady whose taste is best evinced
by her own personal elegance, I shall give you a short extract from a little
tract of her’s, which, like the divine Psyché of Mrs. Tighe, has been only
permitted to meet the eyes of a favored few.
“Who is there among us that has not witnessed a beautiful woman so
apparelled as to render her rather an object of pity and ridicule than of
admiration? How often do we see simplicity and youthful loveliness
obscured by a redundancy of ornaments! How often do the robust and
healthy, the majestic and the gay, the pensive and the sportive, follow the
same mode; marring, mingling and mangling without mercy, and without
taste; regardless of discrimination, appropriation, or judgment; to the total
overthrow of the attractions which nature liberally bestowed! Do not these
ladies perceive that each style of personal beauty has a distinct character to
support? That a tasteful adaptation will enforce the stamp which nature has
impressed? Let us then admonish the female whose beauty is of the fair,
pale, and interesting cast, not to render her appearance insipid by the
overpowering hues of robes, mantles, pelisses, &c. of amber, orange, grass-
green, crimson, or rose-color. This soft style of beauty makes its appeal to
our most delicate perceptions; all grossness of color displeases them, and
therefore should not be admitted in the articles of her dress.
“Grass-green, though a color exceedingly pleasing and refreshing in
itself, jaundices the complexion of the pale woman to such a degree, as to
excite little other sensations in the beholder than compassion for the poor
invalid. Such females should, in general, choose their robes of an entire
color; and when they wear white garments, they should animate them with
draperies, mantles, scarfs, ribbons, &c. of pale pink, blossom-color,
celestial blue, lilac, dove-color, and primrose; leaving full green, deep blue,
and purple, to the florid; and amber, scarlet, orange, flame-color, and deep
rose, to the brunette.
“Thus much we offer in the suitable appropriations of colors. We shall
now proceed to say something on the prevailing fashions of the day; and

though we may fairly congratulate our countrywomen on their taste and
improvement in this particular, yet here also the regulating hand of
judgment, the nice and discriminating effects of genius, and the directing
influence of a delicate and just taste, become most importantly necessary.
“The mantle, or cottage-cloak, should never be worn by females
exceeding a moderate embonpoint; and we should recommend their winter
garbs, such as Russian pelisses and Turkish wraps, to be formed of double
sarsnet, or fine Merino cloth, rather than velvets, which (except black) give
an appearance of increased size to the wearer. In the adoption of furs, flat-
ermine or fringe fur is better suited to the full-formed woman that swan’s-
down, fox, chinchilla, or sable; these are graceful for the more slender.
Women of a spare habit, and of a tall and elegant height, will derive
considerable advantage from the full-flowing robe, mantle, and Roman
tunic. The fur-trimming, too, gives to them an appearance of roundness
which nature has denied; and to this description of person we can scarcely
recommend an evening dress more chaste, elegant, and advantageous, than
robes of white satin, trimmed with swan’s-down, with draperies of silver or
gossamer net. The antique head-dress, or queen Mary coif, is best adapted
to the Roman and Grecian line of feature. The Chinese hat and Highland
helmet are becoming to countenances of a rounder and more playful
contour.
“We have frequently, in our observations, found occasion to lament, in
the present style of female dress, a want of that proper distinction which
should ever be attended to in the several degrees of costume. For instance,
the short gown, so appropriate and convenient for walking, and pursuing
morning avocations or exercises, intrudes beyond its sphere when seen in
the evening or full dress. It is in the splendid drawing-room that the train
robe appears with all that superiority which gives pre-eminence to grace,
and dignity to beauty.
“Why should these pleasingly-varying distinctions be neglected? The
long sleeve, too, (now so universal in almost every order of dress,) belongs
with strict propriety only to the domestic habit. These are inattentions or
faults which a correct taste will quickly discover, and easily rectify. It is
dangerous to level distinctions in one case, and disadvantageous in the
other. There should be a just and reasonable discipline in trifles, as well as
in matters of higher import. There is a vast deal more in things of seeming

insignificance than is commonly imagined. Subjects of importance, high
achievements, and glorious examples, strike every beholder; but there are
few who reflect that it is by perseverance, and attention to comparative
trifles, that mighty deeds are performed, and that great consequences are
ultimately produced.
“A correct taste is ever the concomitant of a chaste mind; for, as a
celebrated author has justly observed, our taste commonly declines with our
merit. A correct taste is the offspring of all that is delicate in sentiment and
just in conception; it softens the inflexibility of truth, and decks reason in
the most persuasive garments.
“A walking-dress cannot be constructed too simply. All attractive and
fancy articles should be confined to the carriage-dress, or dinner and
evening apparel. We shall here particularly address the order of females
who may not have the luxury of a carriage, and yet be within the rank of
gentlewomen. This class composes treble the number of those to whom
fortune has bestowed the appendages of equipages and retinue. We shall, in
our observations, particularly aim at increasing their respectability, by
leading them to adopt a style of adornment, which, while it combines
fashion and elegance, shall be remarkable only for its neatness and
simplicity.
“It has been said that the love of dress is natural to the sex; and we see no
reason why any female should be offended with the assertion. ‘Dress,’ says
an author on the subject, ‘is the natural finish of beauty. Without dress a
handsome person is a gem, but a gem that is not set.’ Dress, however, must
be subject to certain rules; be consistent with the graces, and with nature.
By attention to these particulars, is produced that agreeable exterior which
pleases, we know not why,—which charms, even without that first and
powerful attraction, beauty.
“Fashion, in her various flights, frequently soars beyond the reach of
propriety. Good sense, taste, and delicacy, then make their appeal in vain.
Her despotic and arbitrary sway levels and confounds. Where is delicacy?
where is policy? we mentally exclaim, when we see the fair inconsiderate
votary of fashion exposing, unseemly, that bosom which good men delight
to imagine the abode of innocence and truth. Can the gaze of the
voluptuous, the unlicensed admiration of the profligate, compensate to the

woman of sentiment and purity for what she loses in the estimation of the
moral and the just?
“But, delicacy apart, what shall we say to the blind conceit of the robust,
the coarse, the waning fair one, who thus obtrude the ravages of time upon
the public eye? Let us not offend. We wish to lead to conviction, not to
awaken resentment.—Fashion must, in these instances, have borrowed the
bondage of fortune, and so blinded her votaries against the sober dictates of
reason, the mild dignity of self-respect.
“There is a mediocrity which bounds all things, and even fixes the
standard which divides virtue from bombast. Let us, therefore, in every
concern, endeavor to observe this happy temperature. Let the youthful
female exhibit, without shade, as much of her bust as shall come within the
limits of fashion, without infringing on the borders of immodesty. Let the
fair of riper years appear less exposed. To sensible and tasteful women a
hint is merely required. They need not very close instructions; for at once
they perceive, combine, and adopt, with judgment and delicacy. The rules
of propriety are followed, as it were, instinctively by them; and their
example is so impressed on the generality of our lovely countrywomen,
(who, too often and inconsiderately, follow the vagaries of fashion with,
perhaps, ridiculous avidity,) that we must take upon us to correct the
irregularities of the many, in hopes that the judicious few will embrace
grace, and make it universal.
“Far be it from us to lead the female mind from its solemn engagements
to the pursuit of comparative nothings. But there is a time and place for all
things, and for every innocent purpose under heaven; and on these grounds
we do not see why a female should not blend the agreeable with the
estimable.
“There are persons who neglect their dress from pride, and a desire to
attract by a careless singularity; but wherever this is the case, depend on it
something is wrong in the mind. Lavater has observed, that persons
habitually attentive to their attire display the same regularity in their
domestic affairs. ‘Young women,’ he continues, ‘who neglect their toilet,
and manifest little concern about dress, indicate a general disregard of
order; a mind but ill adapted to the detail of house-keeping; a deficiency of
taste, and of the qualities that inspire love:—they will be careless in

everything. The girl of eighteen who desires not to please, will be a slut, or
a shrew, at twentyfive. Pay attention, young men, to this sign; it never yet
was known to deceive.’
“Hence we see that the desire of exhibiting an amiable exterior is
essentially requisite in woman. It is to be received as an unequivocal
symbol of those qualities which we seek in a wife; it indicates cleanliness,
sweetness, a love of order, and of universal propriety. What, then, is there to
censure in a moderate consideration of dress?—Nothing. We may blame
when we find extravagance, profusion, misappropriation; the tyranny of
fashion; slavery to vanity; in short, bad taste!
“Let us then urge the British fair to that elegant simplicity, that
discriminating selection, which combines fashion, utility, and grace. Thus
shall the inventive faculty of genius be honored and encouraged, and
industry receive the reward of its ingenuity and labors.
“We shall now proceed to notice the present articles which claim
fashionable pre-eminence, and give some useful hints on their application.
“As a walking habit, we know of none in summer which is more graceful
than the lightly flowing shade of lace or finest muslin. And in winter no
invention can exceed the Trans-Baltic coat or Lapland-wrap. These
comfortable shields from the cold are usually formed of cloth or velvet,
with deep collars and cuffs of sable, or other well-contrasted fur. Ladies of
the first nobility usually have them lined throughout with the same costly
skins. These garments wrap over the figure in front; sometimes they have
them without other ornament than their bordering furs; and at others, fasten
them with magnificent clasps and buckles. We have seen one of these coats
(or, as northern travellers denominate them, shoubs,) on a female of high
rank, composed of crimson-velvet, with deep cuffs, cape and collar of
spotted ermine, and a deep border of the same down the sides. It had a
superb effect; and, with the imperial helmet-hat of the same material,
exhibited one of the most sumptuous carriage costumes that can be
imagined.
“When this dress is adopted by the pedestrian fair, we recommend it to be
of a more sober hue, and that the bonnet should be of the provincial poke or
cottage form.

“Short women destroy the symmetry of their forms, and encumber their
charms, with redundancy of ornament, either in their morning or evening
attires. A little woman, befeathered and furbelowed, looks like a queen of
the Bantam tribe; and we dare not approach her for fear of ruffling her
plumes. Feathers are much in vogue; and though formerly a symbol of full
dress, are now often a mark of graceful negligence, and are seen falling
carelessly, and floating with ease; they kiss the rosy cheek of youth and
health; or, less courteous, steal the vermilion from the painted face of fading
maturity, as, fanned by the spiteful breeze, they wave from her bonneted
head in the gay promenade.
“We love to see our countrywomen remarkable for elegance and
modesty, as well as beauty. Englishmen, accustomed to objects of
undisputed loveliness, aim at something beyond the surface of external
charms; they require that all should be fair within.
“Hear what a male writer has observed on the fashion of exposing the
bosom! ‘A woman, proud of her beauty,’ says he, ‘may possibly be nothing
but a coquette; one who makes a public display of her bosom, is something
worse.’ This writer insinuates too much; for we believe that so far from our
females being actuated in this case by any unbecoming motive, they too
commonly act from no motive at all, save that blind and mistaken one
which we have so much condemned—the heedless adoption of an absurdity
because it is the fashion! But let the inconsiderate beauty remember, that
where two motives can be assigned to an action, the world will generally
adopt that which is least favorable!”
Though I have made this extract, which enters so intimately into the
secrets of the toilet, and descants so engagingly on its attractive subject, I
must desire that it may not be supposed I would seek to create an inordinate
degree of care respecting that which is comparatively of no account, when
placed in competition with the indispensable qualities and acquirements
which ought to adorn the Christian maid. I would have my fair friends be
fully impressed with the truth, that it is not she who spends the most time at
her toilet that is usually the best dressed; a too zealous care generally
subverts the effect it was meant to produce. It is very easy to “varnish till
the painting disappears.” A multiplicity of ornaments ever distracts the
attention, and detracts from feminine loveliness. They are regarded as a sort

of make weights in a scale, where nature must have been a niggard to render
them necessary.
In the like manner, a diversity of colors bespeaks vulgarity of taste, and a
mind without innate elegance or acquired culture. Where doubt may be
about this or that hue being becoming or genteel (as it is very possible it
may neither be the one nor the other,) let the puzzled beauty leave both, and
securely array herself in simple white, “pure as her mind.” That primeval
hue never offends, and frequently is the most graceful robe that youth and
loveliness can wear. “It is inconceivable,” says a writer on the subject, “how
much the color of a gown or a shawl may heighten or destroy the beauty of
a complexion; and how much the sex in general neglect these (to them)
important particulars.” Every consideration must yield to the prevailing
mode; and to this tyrant all advantages are sacrificed. Women no longer
consult their figures, but the whim of the moment; and it is sufficient for
them that the Duchess of D——, or the Marchioness of E——, appeared in
murry color or coquelicot, to make all the belles in England, black, brown,
or fair, array themselves in the same livery.
Nothing contributes more to the setting forth of the beauties of a
complexion than the choice of the colors opposed to it. Women should not
only be nice in this adaptation, but they must be careful that the different
shades or hues they admit in the various parts of their garments should
accord with each other.
Here it is that we distinguish the woman of taste from the hoyden, ready
to employ a pedlar’s pack upon her shoulders. To attempt to contrast two
shades of the same color, has in general a very harsh effect; indeed I never
saw it harmonize in the least, except in the case of two greens as a
trimming; or in the beautiful blending of nature in the form and hues of
flowers.
It is also not unworthy of remark, that colors which are to make a part of
evening apparel ought to be chosen by candle-light; for if in the morning,
forgetful of the influence of different lights on these things, you purchase a
robe of pale yellow, purple, lilac, or rose-color, you will be greatly
disappointed when at night it is observed to you that your dress is either
dingy, foxy, or black.

The harmonious assortment of well-chosen colors was once quite a
science amongst women; and even now it may not only be considered as a
specimen of delicate taste, but a proof of that genius which, if cultivated,
might distil the hues of Iris over the animated canvass fraught with beauty
and life.
This union of a thousand dyes, “by nature’s pure and cunning hand laid
on,” cannot be found in greater perfection than in the resplendent lap of
summer; then the earth teems with gay enchantment, and presents to the fair
wanderers through her fragrant bowers the loveliest raiment for their
beauties. This animating and native ornament, so interesting and charming
in itself, should ever find a place on the toilet of youth. How can a
beauteous young woman (the fairest production of creation) be more
suitably adorned than with this sweet apparel of the fairest season? It is
uniting “sweets to the sweet.” Flowers recall so many pleasing images to
the mind, that when a beholder sees them, he is ever put in a temper to
admire; and, when they are found blended with the beauties of a lovely girl,
the effect is irresistible.
The simple wreath of roses, the jessamine, the lily of the valley, the
snow-drop, the brilliant ranunculus, and a long train of rival sweets, offer
themselves at the shrine of female taste. From this rich assemblage are
selected and formed those delicious garlands which deck the snowy brows
of Celia, which twine with Chloe’s golden hair. From this fair parterre we
collect the variegated bouquet, which, reposing on the bosom of beauty,
mingles its fragrant breath with hers.
This tender, this exquisite sweetness, which we inhale from the lily, the
rose, or the violet, is far preferable to all the extracted perfumes that ever
were wafted “from Indus to the pole.” They are not only purer and more
balmy; but, when, on approaching a lovely woman, we find, not only our
eye delighted with the sight of beauty, but our senses “wrapped in the sweet
embrace of soft perfumes;” when it is not the preconcerted fragrancy of
essences drawn from east to west, and poured upon the fair with the design
to affect our senses; then we yield ourselves to the lovely breathing of
nature. We see her in the charming creature before us, blooming in youth
and freshness; we feel her in the thousand odors of Paradise emanating
from the newly-plucked flowers, which seem to share her being, imbibing
and partaking sweetness.

Amidst the variety of materials with which women decorate their
persons, there is not one that requires greater discrimination in the use than
those articles of jewelry which we denominate trinkets. Here good taste, the
general regulatrix, now resumes her sway. The blind directress of the
luxuriant imagination gives grace to solidity, and consequence to trifles.
Her magic spirit breathes in the laurels of the hero, dwells on the lip of
oratory, and sparkles in the gem that decorates the fair!
To women of the most exalted as well as of the more humble ranks, we
recommend a moderate, rather than a profuse, display of conspicuous and
showy ornaments. A well-educated taste ought to open the eyes of a woman
to be a tolerably correct judge of the perfections or imperfections of her
own person; and by that judgment she ought to regulate the adoption or
rejection of striking decoration.
It is well to remind my youthful reader that she can never learn these
truths (when they are on the defective side) but from the decisions of her
own impartial mind. Few women, much less men, would venture to say to
an improperly dressed young lady,—“Madam, your fingers are two clumsy
to wear with advantage that brilliant ring;—your neck and arms are two
meagre, discolored, or coarse, to adopt the pearl bracelet or necklace;
unless, indeed, you soften the contrast by putting a lace shirt and long
sleeves between your skin and the pearls.” These observations would place
the too frank adviser in a similar situation with that of Gil Blas when
correcting the manuscripts of the conceited Prelate of Granada;—and,
therefore, we cannot expect that any friend should run the risk of incurring
our resentment, when they might retain our favor by only permitting us to
make ourselves as ridiculous as we please.
Let me then, in the light of an author, who cannot be supposed, in a
general address, to mean any individual personal reflections, admonish my
readers, one and all, not to neglect composing their complexions with the
hues and brilliancy of the gems offered to them to wear. Clear brunettes
shine with the greatest lustre when they adopt pearls, diamonds, topazes,
and bright amber. The fair beauty may also wear all these with advantage,
while she exclusively claims as her own, emeralds, garnets, amethysts,
rubies, onyxes, &c. &c. Cornelian, coral, and jet, may be worn by either;
but certainly produce the most pleasing effect on the rose and lily
complexion.

Ornaments and trimmings of silver are to be preferred to gold, when
intended for the fair beauty. The white lustre of the first of these costly
metals harmonizes better with delicacy of skin than the glaring effulgence
of the gold. By a parity of reasoning, gold agrees better with the brunette, as
its yellow and flaming hue lights up the fire of her eyes, and exhibits her
complexion in the brightest contrast.
If the clavicle, or collar-bone, be too apparent, either from accidental
thinness or original shape, remedy the defect by letting the necklace fall
immediately into the cavity which the ungraceful projection occasions. But
should this bone protrude itself to an absolutely ugly extent, I would
recommend the neck to be completely covered by a lace handkerchief and
frill; for its exposure would only give a bad specimen of a figure which may
be, in every other part, of a just and fine proportion.
If the prevailing fashion be to reject the long sleeve, and to partially
display the arm, let the glove advance considerably above the elbow, and
there be fastened with a drawing-string, or armlet. But this should only be
the case when the arm is muscular, coarse, or scraggy. When it is fair,
smooth, and round, it will admit of the glove being pushed down to a little
above the wrists.
There is perhaps no single beauty of the female form which obtains so
much admiration as a well-proportioned foot and ankle. Possibly the
liveliness of this sentiment may be increased in this instance by the rarity of
the perfection being found amongst the British fair.
There is a je ne sais quoi in a fine ankle, which seems to assure the gazer
that the whole of the form, of which it is a sample, is shaped with the same
exquisite grace. A heavy leg and foot seems to hint that the whole of the
limbs which the drapery conceals are in a gravitating proportion with their
clumsy foundations; and where we see ponderosity of body, we are apt to
conclude that there is equal heaviness in mind and feelings. This may be an
unjust mode of reasoning, but it is a very common one; and so I account for
the general prejudice against any unusual weight in the lower extremities.
When we consider that it required the famous sculptor of Greece to
collect the most beautiful virgins from every part of his country before he
could find a living model for every part of his projected statue of perfect
beauty; when we consider this, that the very native land of female charms

could not produce one woman completely faultless in her form—how can
we be so unreasonable as to demand such perfection in a daughter of
Britain?
Let not the other sex scrutinize too closely, nor demand that universal and
correct symmetry in their wives and daughters, which was never yet found
but in the elaborately chiseled models of the sculptor’s study.
It must not, however, be presumed from what I have said, that the
generality of other countries are happier in the beautiful formation of their
women’s forms than England, or that the British fair are at all more
notorious than many other nations for heavy feet and legs. So far from it,
there are ladies in England with feet and ankles of so delicate a symmetry,
that there is nothing in modelling or in marble to excel their perfection. But
to make a display of them—to exhibit them by unusually short petticoats,
and draw attention by extraordinary gay attire, is an instance of immodesty
and ill-taste, which attracts contempt instead of admiration. Men despise
her for her impropriety, and envious women have a fair subject on which to
ground their detractions.
In short, it can never be sufficiently inculcated, that modesty is the most
graceful ornament of beauty.
“She that has that, is clad in complete steel.”
Be the foot eminently handsome, or the reverse, it alike requires to be
arrayed soberly. Except on certain brilliant occasions, its shoe should be
confined to grave and clean-looking colors; of the first, black, grays, and
browns; of the last, white, nankeen, pale-blue, green, &c., according to the
color of the dress, and the time of day. I should suppose it almost useless to
say, that (except in a carriage) the dark colors ought to be preferred in a
morning. To be sure, there is nothing out of character in wearing nankeen
shoes or half-boots in the early part of the day, even in walking, provided
the other parts of your dress be spotless white, or of the same buff hue. The
other delicate colors I have mentioned above (I repeat, except in a carriage)
are confined to evening dresses. Red morocco, scarlet, and those very vivid
hues, cannot be worn with any propriety until winter, when the color of the
mantle or pelisse may sanction its fulness. On brilliant assembly nights, or
court drawing-rooms, the spangled or diamond-decorated slipper has a

magnificent and appropriate effect. But for the raiment of the leg, we totally
disapprove, at all times, of the much ornamented stocking.
The open-wove clock and instep, instead of displaying fine proportion,
confuse the contour; and may produce an impression of gaiety, but exclude
that of beauty, whose rays always strike singly. But if the cloak be a colored
or a gold one, as I have sometimes seen, how glaring is the exhibition! how
coarse the association of ideas it produces in the fancy! Instead of a woman
of refined manners and polished habits, your imagination reverts to the
gross and revolting females of Portsmouth-point, or Plymouth-dock; or at
least to the hired opera-dancer, whose business it is to make her foot and
ankle the principal object which characterizes her charms, and attracts the
coup d’œil of the whole assembly.
If I may give my fair friends a hint on this delicate subject, it would be
that the finest rounded ankles are most effectually shown by wearing a silk
stocking without any clock. The eye then slides easily over the unbroken
line, and takes in all its beauties. But when the ankle is rather large, or
square, then a pretty unobtrusive net clock, of the same color as the
stocking, will be a useful division, and induce the beholder to believe the
perfect symmetry of the parts. A very thick leg cannot be disguised or
amended; and in this case I can only recommend absolute neatness in the
dressing of the limb, and petticoats so long that there is hardly a chance of
its ever being seen.
One cause of thick ankles in young women is want of exercise, and
abiding much in overheated rooms. Standing too long has often the same
effect, by subjecting the limb to an unnatural load, and therefore to
swelling. The only preventive, or cure, for this malady, is a strict attention
to health. You might as well expect to see a rose-bush spring, bud, and
bloom, in a closely-pent oven, as anticipate fine proportions and
complexion from a long continuance of the exotic fashions of modern days.
If a girl wishes to be well-shaped and well-complexioned, she must use
due exercise on foot. Horseback is an excellent auxiliary, as it gives much
the same degree of motion, with double the animation, in consequence of
the change of air, and variation of objects; but carriage exercise is so little,
that we cannot recommend it to any case that is short of an absolute invalid.
A woman in respectable health must walk, to maintain her happy

temperament. By this she will still more consolidate her solids, and preserve
the shape with which nature has kindly endowed her. If it was originally
fine, it will remain; and if it was but ordinary, it will at least save itself from
growing deformed.

ON DEPORTMENT.

“Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.”

Milton.
Having discoursed so largely on form and apparel, I shall now throw
together a few hints on that indispensable assistant-grace of beauty, an
elegant and appropriate air.
This subject should be particularly considered; and the arguments from
such reflections strongly enforced on the attention of young women. There
is scarcely an observer of manners and their effects, who will not maintain
that the most beautiful and well-dressed woman will soon cease to please,
unless her charms are accompanied with the ineffable enchantment of a
graceful demeanor. A pretty face may be seen every day, but grace and
elegance, being generally the offspring of a polished mind, are more
distinguished.
While we exult in the pre-eminent beauty of our fair countrywomen;
while we talk of their lilies and roses, and downy skins; we cannot but
shrink from comparison when we bring their manners in parallel with the
females of other nations, who have not half their corporeal advantages.
I am not going to deny, that in this land of beauty, (a land to which a
certain cardinal, many centuries ago, gave the appellation of the native
paradise of angels!) we shall find the fair
“Fitted to shine in courts, or walk the shade,
With innocence and contemplation join’d.”
There are many lovely women of all ranks in England who merit this
encomium: but I am not writing an eulogium on these happy exceptions; I
feel it my duty to admonish the general race of my female contemporaries.
To the rising generation I especially address myself; and when the young
belle in her teens listens to the suggestions of experience, perhaps the
advice may not be quite so unpalatable, when she understands that it comes
from one who has studied the graces at more than one of the courts of the

Bourbons; and, since their dispersion, has followed the flight of elegance
wherever it was to be found.
The awkward, reserved air of the early part of the last century has given
way, not to grace and frankness, but to an unblushing impudence, which is
the very assassin of female virtue and connubial honor. Think not I am too
severe, ye indulgent mothers! regard me not as a cynic, ye thoughtless
daughters of imitation! I mean not to arraign your hearts, but your manners;
I seek to pluck the garb of Phryné from your chaste and Christian shoulders.
Who, that is an actress, when called upon to perform the part of spotless
Virginia, would rush upon the stage half naked, dancing, rolling her eyes as
if intoxicated, and flirting with every officer of the pretorian guard who
crossed her path? In such a case should we not call the actress mad? or say,
“If such were Virginia, he performed a rash and unnecessary act, who
avenged the insulted person of such a wanton on the first magistrate of
Rome!”
Yet such Virginias are our Virginias! and to see a modest, abashed,
retiring, blushing girl enter one of our assemblies, is as uncommon a sight
as now and then an embassy from a foreign land. The modern taste for
exhibitions of all kinds is the chief source of this depravity; a girl is no
longer taught to dance that she may move easily in the occasional festivities
of her neighborhood, and enjoy the graceful exercise of a birth-day or a race
ball, without annoying the movements of her companions. No! these are not
sufficient: she takes her lessons of the corps de ballet, that she may present
herself in the ball-room or on a stage; and while the motions of her limbs,
and the exposure of her person, scandalize every discreet matron present,
she believes herself the object of general admiration, the very ne plus ultra
of the art. In like manner, her musical talents are cultivated. She does not
learn to compose, with her sweet lullaby, the unquiet hours of old age or of
sickness, to rest and sleep: enough for her relations, father, brothers,
husband, that she practises all day the crude and disagreeable parts of her
lessons. It is for the guest, the gay assembly, the concert of amateurs, that
she reserves her harmonies; and to them she sings and plays till she believes
herself the tenth muse, and them her adorers.
Can we be surprised that from such an education should be produced the
vain, the conceited, the presumptuous, the impudent?

To check this growing evil, by showing the young candidate for
admiration what is “woman’s best knowledge and her praise;” to show her
what is indeed the proper, the graceful, the winning deportment, is the
design of these few following pages; and I trust that my young reader will
receive them as the admonition of a tender and experienced parent, and not
allow “a mother’s precepts to be vain!”
Having laid it down as a first principle, that no demeanor, whether in a
princess or a country girl, can be becoming that is not grounded in feminine
delicacy, I shall proceed to show, that a different deportment is expected
from different persons. Certain characteristics of persons are suited to
certain styles of manner; and also the same demeanor does not agree as well
with the steward’s daughter as the squire’s bride.
As in a former chapter I have particularized the dresses which are
adapted to the gay and the grave, so in the next I propose pointing out the
appropriate miens which belong to the various degrees of beauty and
classes of society.

PECULIARITIES IN CARRIAGE AND DEMEANOR.

“By her graceful walk, the Queen of Love is known.”

Virgil.
As order is the beautiful harmonizer of the universe, so consistency is the
graceful combiner of all that is in woman to perfection.
In reference to this sentiment, her manners must bear due affinity with
her figure, and her deportment with her rank. The youthful and delicate-
shaped girl is allowed a gaiety of air which would ill become a women of
maturer years and larger proportions; but at all times of life, when the figure
is slender, a swan-like neck, and the motions are naturally swaying, for that
girl, or that woman, to affect what is called a majestic air, would be as
unavailing as absurd. It is not in the power of a figure so constructed ever to
look majestic. By stiffening her joints, walking with an erect mien, and
drawing up her neck, she would certainly be upright; she would seem to
have had a determined dancing-master, who, in spite of nature and grace,
had made her hold up her head; but she would never look like anything but
a stiff, inelegant creature. The character of these slight forms corresponds
with their resemblances in the vegetable world: the aspen, the willow, bend
their gentle heads at every passing breeze, and their flexible and tender
arms toss in the wind with grace and beauty: such is the woman of delicate
proportions. She must enter a room either with the buoyant step of a young
nymph, if youth is her passport to sportiveness; or, if she is advanced nearer
the meridian of life, she then may glide in, with that ease of manner which
gives play to all the graceful motions of her elegantly undulating form. For
her to crane up her neck, would be to change its fine swan-like bend into
the scraggy throat of the ostrich: all her movements should be of a flexible
character. Her mode of salutation should be rather a bow than a courtesy;
and when she sits, she should model her easy attitude rather by the ideas of
the painter, when he would pourtray a reclining nymph, than according to
the lessons of the grace-destroying governess, who would marshal her
pupils on their chairs like a rank of drilled recruits. In short, for a slender or
thin woman, to be stiff at any time, is, in the first case, to render of no effect
the advantages of nature; and, in the next, to increase and aggravate her

defects, by making it more conspicuous by a constrained and ridiculous
carriage.
Though we cannot unite the majestic air which declares command with
this easy, nymph-like deportment, the dignity of modesty may be its
inseparable companion. The timid, the retreating step; the downcast eye; the
varying complexion, “blushing at the deep regard she draws!” all these
belong to this class of females; and they are charms so truly feminine, so
exquisitely lovely, that I cannot but place them with their counterpart, the
ethereal form, as the perfection of female beauty.
The woman whose figure bears nature’s own stamp of majesty, is
generally of a stately make; her person is squarer, and has more of
embonpoint than the foregoing. The very muscles of her neck are so formed
as to show their adaptation to an erect posture. There is a sort of loftiness in
the natural movement of her head, in the high swell of her expansive
bosom. The step of this woman should be grave and firm: her motions few
and commanding; and the carriage of her head and person erect and steady.
An excess in stateliness could not have any worse effect on her, than
perverting the majesty of nature into the haughtiness of art. We might
admire or revere the first; the last we would probably resent and detest. The
dignified beauty must therefore beware of overstraining the natural bent of
her character: it is like the bombast of exalted language which never fails to
lose its aim, and engender disgust. We might laugh at a delicate girl, so far
exaggerating the pliancy of her form and ease of manners, as to twist
herself into the thousand antics of a Columbine: she aims at pleasing us,
and though she chooses the wrong method, we will not frown, but only
smile at the ridiculous exhibition. But when a majestic fair one presumes to
arrogate an undue consequence in her air, it is not to gratify our senses that
she assumes the extraordinary diadem: and, irritated at the contempt her
greatness would wish to throw upon us inferior personages, we treat her like
an usurper; and, armed with a sense of injustice, we determine to pull her at
once from her throne.
The easy, graceful air, we see, belongs exclusively to the slender beauty,
and the moderated majestic mien to a greater embonpoint.
There is a race of women whose persons have no determined character.
These must regulate and adopt their demeanors according to the degrees in

which they approach the two before-mentioned classes. But in all cases, let
it never be forgotten, that a too faint copy of a model is better than an
overcharged one. Excess is always bad. Moderation never offends. By
falling easily into the degree of undulating grace, or the dignified demeanor
which suits your character, you merely put on the robe which nature
designed, and the habit will be fit and becoming.
But when the nymph-like form assumes a regal port, or a commanding
dame pretends to “skip and play,” the affectation on both sides is equally
absurd: discords of this kind are ever ridiculous and odious. Besides these,
there are affectations of other descriptions, of equal folly and bad effect.
Some ladies, to whom nature has given a good sight, and lovely orbs to
look through, must needs pretend a kind of half-blindness, and they go
peeping about through an eye-glass, dangling at the end of a long gold
chain, hanging at their necks. Not content with this affectation of one
defect, they assume another, and lisp so inarticulately, that hardly three
words in a sentence are intelligible. All such follies as these are not more a
death-blow to all respect for the novice that plays them off, than they are
sure antidotes to any charms she may possess. Simplicity is the perfection
of form; simplicity is the perfection of fine dressing; simplicity is the
perfection of air and manners.
In the details of carriage, we must not omit a due attention to gait, and its
accompanying air. We find that it was “by her graceful walk the Queen of
Love was known!” In this particular, the French women far exceed us. Pope
observes, that “they move easiest who have learnt to dance.” And it is the
step of the highly-accomplished dancer that we see in the generality of
well-bred Frenchwomen; not the march of the military sergeant, which is
the usual study with our pedestrian Graces. There is a buoyant lightness, a
dignified ease in the walk of a lady, who has been taught the use of her
limbs by a fine dancer, which is never seen in her who has been drilled by
the halbert, and told to stand at ease with her hands resting on her stomach,
as if reposing on the trigger of her fire-lock. Such a way as we have fallen
upon to teach our daughters the graceful step of the Queen of Love, is,
indeed, so singular, that until another race of Amazons arise, to whom
military tactics may be useful, we have no chance of any imitators. Indeed,
the marching walk of Englishwomen is so ridiculous, even in the eyes of
their own countrymen, that I remember of being one day in St. James’s

Park, with one of these female recruits, when a sentinel, with a humorous
gravity, struck his musket to her as she passed.
Both in the case of air and gait, it is necessary to begin early to train the
person and the limbs to the ease and grace you wish. It is difficult to
straighten the stem long left to diverge into irregular wildness; but the
tender tree, pliant in youth, needs only the directing hand of a careful
gardener to train it to symmetry and luxuriance.
Many of the naturally most pleasing parts of the female shape have I seen
assume an appearance absolutely disgusting; and all form an outre air,
vulgar manners, or hoydening postures. The bosom, which should be
prominent, by a lounging attitude, sinks into slovenly flatness, rounding the
back, and projecting the shoulders! On the one side, I have seen a finely-
proportioned figure transform herself into a perfect fright by this awkward
neglect of all propriety and grace; and, on the other, I am acquainted with a
lady, whose beauty, taken in the common acceptation of the word, would
not obtain her a second look, but in the elegance of her manners, in the
dignity of her carriage, in the taste and disposition of her attire, and in the
thousand inexpressible charms which distinguish the gentlewoman, she is
so powerful that none can behold her without captivation.
A late author, in a work entitled, “Remarks on the English and French
Ladies,” very ably points out the superior attention which the women of
France pay to the cultivation of their air and manners; and he proceeds, with
no inconsiderable degree of eloquence, to exhort the British fair not to lose,
by a careless neglect, the advantages which nature has given them over the
belles of la grande nation.
“It must not be dissembled,” says this writer, “that our much fairer
countrywomen (the English) are too often apt to forget that native charms
may receive considerable improvement by attending to the regulation of
carriage and motion. They ought to be reminded, that it is chiefly by an
attention of this kind, that the Frenchwomen, though unable to rival them in
such exterior perfections as are the gift of nature, attain, however, to a
degree of eminence in other accomplishments, that effaces the recollection
of their inferiority in personal charms.” He proceeds to observe, that “the
gracefulness of a French lady’s step is always a subject of high
commendation in the mouth even of Frenchmen;” and again he says,

“conscious where their advantage lies, they spare no pains to improve that
grace of manner, that fund of vivacity, which are in their nature so
agreeable, and which they know so well how to manage to the best effect.”
My intimacy with the French manners makes me quote these short
extracts with greater pleasure; and as I bear witness to the truth of their
evidence, I hope that an amiable ambition will unite in the breasts of the
British fair, to rise as much superior to their French rivals in all feminine
graces, as our British heroes are to the French on the seas! We shall then see
cultivated understandings, unaffected cheerfulness, and manners of an
enchantment not to be exceeded by the fairest sorceresses in beauty and
grace.
Sorceresses I would make you, my gentle friends; but your spells should
be those of nature and of virtue. While I exhort you to preserve your
persons in comeliness, to array yourselves in elegance and sweet attractive
grace, I would not lead you to believe, that these are all your charms; that
these are sufficient “to take the captive soul of love, and lap it in Elysium!”
No; woman was created for higher attainments; many a heart was formed to
pant for dearer joys than these can produce. Woman must, in every respect,
and at all times, regard her form as a secondary object; her mind is the point
of her first attention; it is the strength of her power; the part that links her
with angels; and, as such, she must respect, cultivate, and exalt it.
But as these familiar pages are expressly intended as a little treatise on
the dress of these admirable qualities, I do not suppose it demanded of me
to enter so minutely into the subject of mind, as I otherwise should have
esteemed it my duty. We have before admitted, that while on this earth
wandering amongst the erring and voluptuous sons of men, virtue must be
clad in an attractive garb, else few will love her for herself. To this end,
then, like Solon of Athens, I give the best directions the inmates of this gay
world are capable of receiving—though, perhaps, not the best I could lay
down. I would win the too earth-clinging soul by his senses, to give up his
sensual enjoyments, and, caught by earthly charms, see and feel his
connexion, and leaving the grosser part, aspire to mingle being with those
alone which partake of immortality.
It is not by the showy attire of meretricious splendor, by the seductive air
of Sybaritical refinement, that I would effect this. “It is good that virtue

keep ever with its like!” my means should ever be consistent with their
object. So, with me, beauty, elegance, and grace, should be the only
pleaders for the empire of morals and religion. On these principles, as I am
aware that the most estimable and amiable qualities adorn the wives and
daughters of our isle, I cannot but be the more solicitous that their outward
deportment and appearance should exhibit a fair specimen of their inward
worth.
“An upright heart, and sensibility of soul, are doubtlessly the most noble
qualifications of the fair sex. These, Englishwomen possess in an eminent
degree. But there are lighter, and perhaps more catching attractions, which,
though they will not bear a competition, are nevertheless great smoothers of
the rough passages of life, and very necessary conducives to social
happiness.”
It is the opinion of wiser heads than mine, that no circumstance, however
trifling in itself, should be neglected, which strengthens the bonds of an
honorable and mutual attachment; and so great is the privilege allowed for
this purpose, that it is deemed laudable in woman to collect into herself all
the innocent advantages, mentally and corporeally, which may render her
most admirable and precious in the eyes of him who may be, or is, her
husband.
This latter sentiment reminds me to impress upon my young friend, that
there are shades of demeanor which must be varied according to the sex,
degree, and affinity of the persons with whom she converses. To men of all
ranks and relations, she must ever hold a reserve on certain subjects, and
indeed on almost every occasion, that she does not deem necessary to
observe with regard to her own sex. To inferiors of both sexes she must ever
preserve a gracious condescension; but to the men a certain air of majesty
must be mixed with it, that she need not assume to the women. To her
equals, particularly of the male sex, her manners must never lose sight of a
dignity sufficient to remind them that she expects respect will be joined
with probable intimacy. In short, no intimacy should ever be so familiar as
to allow of any infringement on the decent reserves which are the only
preservers of refinement in friendship and love. What are called cronies
amongst girls, are among the worst of connexions, as they generally are the
very hotbeds of fancified love-fits, secrecies, and really vulgar tale-bearing.

“Celestial friendship!
Whene’er she stoops to visit earth, one shrine
The goddess finds, and one alone,
To make her sweet amends for absent Heaven,—
The bosom of a friend, where heart meets heart,
Reciprocally soft—
Each other’s pillow to repose divine!”
This friendship is indeed the gift of Heaven—a boon more precious than
much fine gold; but it is not usually to be found in school cronies, or in the
confidence of misses, whose unbosomings usually consist of flirtations,
complaints against parents and guardians, and schemes for future parties of
pleasure. Friendship is too sacred for these pretenders; under her influence,
“heart meets heart,” and acknowledges her as the pledge of Heaven to man,
of immortality, and endless joys. To such an intimate your whole soul may
be laid open. But such an intimate is rare. You may meet her once in the
shape of a female friend, and in that of a tender husband! But believe not
that her appearance will be more frequent. Hers are “like angels’ visits, few
and far between!” Earth would be too much like heaven were it otherwise.
To the generality, then, of your equals, while you are affable and amiable
with them all, you must be intimate with few, and preserve an ingenuous
reserve with most. Show them your sense of propriety demands a certain
distance, and with redoubled respect they will yield what you require. With
men of your acquaintance, you ought to be more reserved than with women.
But while I counsel such dignity of manners, you must not suppose that I
mean starchness, stiffness, prudery; I only recommend the modesty of the
virgin—the sober dignity of matron years.
The present familiarity between the sexes is both shocking to delicacy,
and to the interests of women. Woman is now treated by the generality of
men with a freedom that levels her with the commonest and most vulgar
objects of their amusements. She is addressed as unceremoniously, treated
as cavalierly, and left as abruptly, as the veriest puppet they could pick up at
a Bartholomew Fair.
We no longer see the respectful bow, the look of polite attention, when a
gentleman approaches a lady. He runs up to her; he seizes her by the hand,

shakes it roughly, asks a few questions, and, to show that he has no interest
in her answers, flies off again before she can make a reply.
To cure our coxcombs of this conceited impertinence, I would strongly
exhort my young and lovely readers. When any man, who is not privileged
by the right of friendship or of kindred, to address her with an air of
affection, attempts to take her hand, let her withdraw it immediately, with
an air so declarative of displeasure, that he shall not presume to repeat the
offence. At no time ought she to volunteer shaking hands with a male
acquaintance, who holds not any particular bond of esteem with regard to
herself or family. A touch, a pressure of the hands, are the only external
signs a woman can give of entertaining a particular regard for certain
individuals; and to lavish this valuable power of expression upon all
comers, upon the impudent and contemptible, is an indelicate extravagance
which, I hope, needs only to be exposed to be put forever out of
countenance.
As to the salute, the pressure of the lips—that is an interchange of
affectionate greeting, or tender farewell, sacred to the dearest connexions
alone. Our parents—our brothers—our near kindred—our husband—our
lover, ready to become our husband,—our bosom’s inmate, the friend of our
heart’s core—to them are exclusively consecrated the lips of delicacy, and
wo be to her who yields them to the stain of profanation!
By the last word, I do not mean the embrace of vice, but merely that
indiscriminate facility which some young women have in permitting what
they call a good-natured kiss. These good-natured kisses have often very
bad effects, and can never be permitted without injuring the fine gloss of
that exquisite modesty, which is the fairest garb of virgin beauty.
I remember the Count M——, one of the most accomplished and
handsomest young men in Vienna. When I was there, he was passionately in
love with a girl of almost peerless beauty. She was the daughter of a man of
great rank and influence at court; and on these considerations, as well as in
regard to her charms, she was followed by a multitude of suitors. She was
lively and amiable, and treated them all with an affability which still kept
them in her train, although it was generally known that she had avowed a
predilection for Count M. and that preparations were making for their
nuptials. The Count was of a refined mind and delicate sensibility. He loved

her for herself alone—for the virtues which he believed dwelt in a beautiful
form; and, like a lover of such perfections, he never approached her without
timidity, and when he touched her, a fire shot through his veins that warned
him never to invade the vermilion sanctuary of her lips. Such were the
feelings, when one night at his intended father-in-law’s, a party of young
people were met to celebrate a certain festival. Several of the young lady’s
rejected suitors were present. Forfeits were one of the pastimes, and all
went on with the greatest merriment, till the Count was commanded by
some witty mademoiselle to redeem his glove by saluting the cheek of his
intended bride. The Count blushed, trembled, advanced to his mistress,
retreated, advanced again—and at last, with a tremor that shook every fibre
in his frame, with a modest grace he put the soft ringlet which played upon
her cheek to his lips, and retired to demand his redeemed pledge in evident
confusion. His mistress gaily smiled, and the game went on. One of her
rejected suitors, but who was of a merry unthinking disposition, was
adjudged, by the same indiscreet crier of the forfeits,—“as his last treat
before he hanged himself,” she said,—to snatch a kiss from the lips of the
object of his recent vows—
“Lips whose broken sighs such fragrance fling,
As Love had fanned them freshly with his wing!”
A lively contest between the lady and the gentleman lasted for a minute;
but the lady yielded, though in the midst of a convulsive laugh. And the
Count had the mortification, the agony, to see the lips, which his passionate
and delicate love would not allow him to touch, kissed with roughness and
repetition by another man, and one whom he despised. Without a word, he
rose from his chair, left the room—and the house; and, by that good-natured
kiss, the fair boast of Vienna lost her husband and her lover. The Count
never saw her more.

ON THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PERSON IN DANCING,
AND IN THE EXERCISE OF OTHER FEMALE
ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined.

Childe Harold.

It is vain to expend large sums of money and large portions of time in the
acquirement of accomplishments, unless some attention be also paid to the
attainment of a certain grace in their exercise, which though a circumstance
distinct from themselves, is the secret of their charms and pleasure-exciting
quality.
As dancing is the accomplishment most calculated to display a fine form,
elegant taste, and graceful carriage, to advantage; so towards it, our regards
must be particularly turned; and we shall find that when Beauty, in all her
power, is to be set forth, she cannot choose a more effective exhibition.
By the exhibition, it must not be understood that I mean to insinuate
anything like that scenic exhibition which we may expect from professors
of the art, who often, regardless of modesty, not only display the symmetry
of their persons, but indelicately expose them, by most improper dresses
and attitudes, on the public stage. What I propose by calling dancing an
elegant mode of showing a fine form to advantage, has nothing more in it,
than to teach the lovely young woman to move unembarrassed and with
peculiar grace through the mazes of a dance, performed either in a private
circle, or public ball.
It must always be remembered, and it cannot be too often repeated, “That
whatever it is worth while to do, it is worth while to do well.” Therefore, as
all times and nations have deemed dancing a salubrious, decorous, and
beautiful exercise, or rather happy pastime and celebration of festivity, I
cannot but regard it with particular complacency. Dancing carries with it a
banquet, alike for taste and feeling. The spectator of a well-ordered English
ball sees, at one view, in a number of elegant young women, every species
of female loveliness. He beholds the perfection of personal proportion.
They are attired with all the gay habiliments of fashion and of fancy; and
their harmonious and agile movements unfold to him, at every turn, the
ever-varying, ever-charming grace of motion.
Thus far his senses only are gratified. But the pleasure stops not there.
His best feelings receive their share also. He looks on each gay
countenance, he sees hilarity in every step; he listens to their delightful
converse, communicated by snatches; and, with a pleasure sympathizing
with theirs, he cannot but acknowledge that dancing is one of the most
innocent and rational, as well as the most elegant, amusements of youth.

It is indeed the favorite pastime of nature. We find it in courts, we meet it
on the village green. Here the rustic swain whispers his ardent suit to his
blushing maid, while his beating heart bounds against hers in the swift
wheel of the rapid dance. There the polished courtier breathes a soft sigh
into the ear of the lady of his vows, as he and she timidly entwine their arms
in the graceful allemande. But dancing has been appropriated to higher
purposes than these; it formed a part of the religious ceremonies of the
Jews.
In every age of fashion but the present, dancing was as much expected
from young persons of both sexes, as that they should join in smiles when
mutually pleased. In days of yore, in the most polite eras of Greece and
Rome, and of the chivalrous ages, we find that dancing was a favorite
amusement with the first ranks of men. Kings, heroes, and unbearded youth,
alike mingled in the graceful exercise. Even in our own island, we read of
the splendid balls given by our Plantagenets and Tudors; and that every
prince and nobleman contended in happy rivalry who should best acquit
themselves in the dance. Here it was that the royal Harry lost his heart to
the lovely Anna Bullen, and in such scenes did the gallant lords of his virgin
daughter’s court breathe out their souls at the feet of British beauty.
Such was the court of England! but now, where is “the merry dance, the
mirth-awakening viol?” In vain our princes led forth their royal sisters and
the fairest ladies in the land to celebrate, with festive steps, the birth-day;
our noble youth, smit with a love of grave folly, abandon the ball for the
gaming-table. The elegant society of the fair is disregarded and exchanged
for fellowship with grooms and masters of the whip. Shame on them! I
cannot descant farther on such vulgar desertion of all that is lovely and
decorous.
Besides the royal brothers, a few yet remain amongst the young men of
our higher ranks, who, in this respect, set a worthy example to the youth of
inferior stations; and them we still meet at the assemblies of taste, moving
with propriety and elegance in the social dance. To make acceptable
partners in the minuet, cotillon, &c. with these yet loyal votaries of
Terpsichore, I beg leave to offer a few hints to my gentle readers.
Extraordinary as it may seem, at a period when dancing is so entirely
neglected by men in general, women appear to be taking the most pains to

acquire the art. Our female youth are now not satisfied with what used to be
considered a good dancing-master; that is, one who made teaching his sole
profession; but now our girls must be taught by the leading dancers at the
opera-house.
The consequence is, when a young lady rises to dance, we no longer see
the graceful, easy step of the gentlewoman, but the labored, and often
indelicate exhibition of the posture-mistress.—Dances from ballets are
introduced; and instead of the jocund and beautifully-organized movements
of hilarity in concord, we are shocked by the most extravagant theatrical
imitations. The chaste minuet is banished; and, in place of dignity and
grace, we behold strange wheelings on one leg, stretching out the other till
our eye meets the garter; and a variety of endless contortions, fitter for the
zenana of an Eastern satrap, or the gardens of Mahomet, than the ball-room
of an Englishwoman of quality and virtue.
These ballet dances are, we now see, generally attempted. I may say
attempted, for not one young woman in five hundred, can, from the very
nature of the thing, after all her study, perform them better than could be
done any day by the commonest figurante on the stage. We all know, that to
be a fine opera-dancer, requires unremitting practice, and a certain
disciplining of the limbs, which hardly any private gentlewoman would
consent to undergo. Hence, ladies can never hope to arrive at any
comparison with even the poorest public professor of the art; and therefore,
to attempt the extravagancies of it, is as absurd as it is indelicate.
The utmost in dancing to which a gentlewoman ought to aspire, is an
agile and graceful movement of her feet, an harmonious motion with her
arms, and a corresponding easy carriage of her whole body. But, when she
has gained this proficiency, should she find herself so unusually mistress of
the art as to be able, in any way, to rival the professors by whom she has
been taught, she must ever hold in mind, that the same style of dancing is
not equally proper for all kinds of dances.
For instance, the English country-dance and the French cotillon require
totally different movements. I know that it is a common thing to introduce
all the varieties of opera-steps into the simple figure of the former. This ill-
judged fashion is inconsistent with the character of the dance, and
consequently so destroys the effect, that no pleasure is produced to the eye

of the judicious spectator by so discordant an exhibition. The characteristic
of an English country-dance is that of gay simplicity. The steps should be
few and easy, and the corresponding motion of the arms and body
unaffected, modest, and graceful.
Before I go further on the subject, I cannot but stop a little to dwell more
particularly on the necessity there is for more attention than we usually find
paid to the management of the arms, and general person, in dancing.
In looking on at a ball, perhaps you will see that every woman, in a dance
of twenty couple, moves her feet with sufficient attention to beauty and
elegance; but, with regard to the deportment, of the rest of the person, most
likely you will not discover one in a hundred who seems to know more
about it than the most uncultivated damsel that ever jogged at a village
wake.
I cannot exactly describe what it is that we see in the carriage of our
young ladies in the dance; for it is difficult to point out a want by any other
expression than a negative. But it is only requisite for my readers to recall
to memory the many inanimate, ungraceful forms, from the waist upwards,
that they nightly see at balls, and I need not describe more circumstantially.
For these ladies to suppose that they are fine dancers because they
execute a variety of difficult steps with ease and precision, is a great
mistake. The motion of the feet is but half the art of dancing; the other, and
indeed the most conspicuous part, lies in the movement of the body, arms,
and head. Here elegance must be conspicuous.
The body should always be poised with such ease as to command a
power of graceful undulation, in harmony with the motion of the limbs in
the dance. Nothing is more ugly than a stiff body and neck during this lively
exercise. The general carriage should be elevated and light; the chest
thrown out, the head easily erect, but flexible to move with every turn of the
figure; and the limbs should be all braced and animated with the spirit of
motion, which seems ready to bound through the very air. By this elasticity
pervading the whole person when the dancer moves off, her flexible shape
will gracefully sway with the varied steps of her feet; and her arms, instead
of hanging loosely by her side, or rising abruptly and squarely up to take
hands with her partner, will be raised in beautiful and harmonious unison

and time with the music and the figure; and her whole person will thus
exhibit to the delighted eye perfection in beauty, grace, and motion.
This attention to the movement of the general figure, and particularly to
that of the arms (for with them is the charm of elegant action,) though, in a
moderated degree, is equally applicable to the English country dance and
the Scotch reel, as to the minuet, the cotillon, and other French dances.
A general idea of natural grace, in all dances, being laid down as a first
principle in this elegant art, I shall suggest a few remarks on the leading
characters of each style; and from them, I hope, my fair friends will be able
to gather some rules which may serve them as useful auxiliaries to the
lessons of their dancing-master.
The English country-dance, as its very name implies, consists of
simplicity and cheerfulness; hence the female who engages in it, must aim
at nothing more, in treading its easy mazes, than executing a few simple
steps with unaffected elegance. Her body, her arms, the turn of her head, the
expression of her countenance, all must bear the same character of
negligent grace, of elegant activity, of decorous gaiety.
The Scotch reel has steps appropriated to itself, and in the dance can
never be displaced for those of France, without an absurdity too ridiculous
even to imagine without laughing. There are no dancers in the world more
expressive of inward hilarity and happiness than the Scotch are, when
performing in their own reels. The music is sufficient—so jocund are its
sounds—to set a whole company on their feet in a moment, and to dance
with all their might, till it ceases, like people bit by the tarantula. Hence, as
the character of reels is merriment, they must be performed with much more
joyance of manner than even the country-dance; and, therefore, they are
better adapted, as society is now constituted, to the social private circle,
than to the public ball. They demand a frankness of deportment, an
undisguised jocularity, which few large parties will properly admit;
therefore, they are more at home in the baronial and kindred-filled hall of
the thane of the Highland clan, than in the splendid and mixed ball-room of
the now modish Anglo-Scottish earl.
French dances, which includes minuets, cotillons, and all the round of
ballet figures, admit of every new refinement and dexterity in the agile art;

and, while exhibiting in them, there is no step, no turn, no attitude, within
the verge of maiden delicacy, that the dancer may not adopt and practise.
I must acknowledge that there is something in the harmonious and
undulating movements of the minuet, particularly pleasing to my idea of
female grace and dignity; and I remember seeing her Highness the Princess
de P——, at the court of Naples, go through the minuet de la Cour with so
eminent a degree of enchanting elegance, that there was not a person
present who was not in raptures with her deportment.
The young Archduke, C——, of A——, was then a youth, and an
incognito visitant with the Prince de V—— F——, and he was so charmed
with the dancing of her highness, whose partner was the renowned General
Marchese di M——, that, in his own heroic manner, he exclaimed to me,
who then sat by his side,—“Ah! madam, that is more interesting than even
the Pyrrhic dance! It reminds me of the beautiful movement of the sun and
moon in the heavens!”
The minuet is now almost out of fashion, but we yet have its serious
movements in many of the dances adopted from the French ballet; and in
these every gradation of grace, and, if I may say it, sentiment in action, may
be discovered. The rapid changes of the cotillon are admirably calculated
for the display of elegant gaiety; and I hope that their animated evolvements
will long continue a favorite accomplishment and amusement with our
youthful fair.
Though much of graceful display is made in these dances, yet there are
many rivals in the cotillon contending for the palm of superiority; and the
contest, throughout, if maintained with the original elegant decorum of the
design, may be continued with undeviating modesty and discretion.
But with regard to the lately introduced German waltz, I cannot speak so
favorably; I must agree with Goethé, when writing of the national dance of
his country, “that none but husbands and wives can with any propriety be
partners in the waltz.”
There is something in the close approximation of persons, in the
attitudes, and in the motion, which ill agrees with the delicacy of woman,
should she be placed in such a situation with any other man than the most
intimate connexion she can have in life. Indeed, I have often heard men, of

no very over-strained feeling, say, “that there are very few women in the
world with whom they could bear to dance the German waltz.”
The fandango, though graceful in its own country—because danced, from
custom, with as reserved a mind as our maidens would make a courtsy,—is,
nevertheless, when attempted here, too great a display of the person for any
modest Englishwoman to venture. It is a solo! Imagine what must be the
assurance of the young woman, who, unaccustomed by the habits of her
country to such singular exhibitions of herself, could get up in a room full
of company, and, with an unblushing face, go through all the evolutions,
postures, and vaultings, of the Spanish fandango? Certainly, there are few
discreet men in England who would say, “such a woman I should like for
my wife!”
The castanets, which are used in this dance, by attracting extraordinary
attention, afford another argument against its being adopted anywhere but
on the stage. The tambourin, the cymbals, and all other noisy
accompaniments, in the hands of a lady-dancer, are equally blameable; and
though a woman may, by their means, exhibit her agility and person to
advantage, she may depend on it, that while the artist only is admired, the
woman will sink into contempt; and that, though she may possibly meet
with lovers to throw a score of embroidered handkerchiefs at her feet, she
will hardly encounter one of a thousand who will venture to trust himself to
the offering her the bond of a single gold ring.
The bullero, another of our Spanish importations, is a dance of so
questionable a description, that I cannot but proscribe it also. It may be
performed with perfect modesty; but the sentiment of it depends so entirely
on the disposition of the dancer, that Delicacy dare hardly venture to enrol
herself in its lists, lest the partner chosen for her might be of a temper to
turn its gaiety into licentiousness; to produce blushes of shame where she
promised herself the glow of pleasure, and send her away from what ought
to have been an innocent amusement, filled with the bitterness of insulted
delicacy.
In short, in addressing my fair countrywomen on this subject, I would
sum up my advice, in regard to the choice of dances, by warning them
against the introduction of new-fangled fashions of this sort. Let them leave
the languishing and meretricious attitudes of modern ballet-teachers to the

dancing-girls of India, or to the Circassian slaves of Turkey, whose
disgraceful business is to please a tyrant for whom they can feel no love.
Let our British fair also turn away from the almost equally unchaste
dances of the southern kingdoms of the continent, and, content with the gay
step of France, and the active merriment of Scotland, with their own festive
movements, continue their native country balls to their blameless delight,
and to the gratification of every tasteful and benevolent observer.
While thus remarking on the manner of dancing, it may not be
unacceptable to add a few words on the dress most appropriate to its light
and unembarrassed motions.
Long trains are, of course, too cumbrous an appendage to be intentionally
assumed when proposing to dance; but it must also be remarked, that very
short petticoats are as inelegant as the others are inconvenient. Scanty
circumscribed habiliments impede the action of the limbs, and, besides their
indelicacy, show the leg in the least graceful of all possible points of view.
The most elegant attire for a ball is, that the under garments should be
absolutely short, but the upper one, which should be of light material,
should reach at least to the top of the instep. It should also be sufficiently
full to fall easily in folds from the waist downwards to the foot. By this
arrangement, when the dancer begins her graceful exercise, the drapery will
elegantly adapt itself to the motion and contour of her limbs; and falling
accidentally on her foot, or as accidentally when she bounds along,
discovering, under its flying folds, her beautifully-turned ankle. Symmetry
and grace will be occasionally displayed, almost unconsciously, and thus
Modesty, taken unawares, will adorn, with blushes, the perfect lineaments
of female beauty.
What has been said in behalf of simple and appropriate dancing, may also
be whispered in the ear of the fair practitioner in music; and, by analogy she
may, not unbeneficially, apply the suggestions to her own case.
There are many young women, who, when they sit down to the piano or
the harp, or to sing, twist themselves into so many contortions, and writhe
their bodies and faces about into such actions and grimaces, as would
almost incline one to believe that they are suffering under the torture of the
toothach, or the gout. Their bosoms heave, their shoulders shrug, their
heads swing to the right and left, their lips quiver, their eyes roll; they sigh,

they pant, they seem ready to expire! And what is all this about? They are
merely playing a favorite concerto, or singing a new Italian song.
If it were possible for these conceit-intoxicated warblers, these
languishing dolls, to guess what rational spectators say of their follies, they
would be ready to break their instruments and be dumb forever. What they
call expression in singing, at the rate they would show it, is only fit to be
exhibited on the stage, when the character of the song intends to portray the
utmost ecstasy of passion to a sighing swain. In short, such an echo to the
words and music of a love ditty, is very improper in any young woman who
would wish to be thought as pure in heart as in person. If amatory addresses
are to be sung, let the expression be in the voice and the composition of the
air, not in the looks and gestures of the lady-singing. The utmost that she
ought to allow herself to do, when thus breathing out the accents of love, is
to wear a serious, tender countenance. More than this is bad, and may
produce reflections in the minds of the hearers very inimical to the
reputation of the fair warbler.
While touching on song, it may not be unwelcome to my truly virgin
readers to have their own delicate rejections sanctioned by a matron’s
judgment against a horde of amorous legends, now chanted forth in almost
every assembly, where they put their heads. Pretty music, and elegant
poetry, seem sufficient excuses to obtain, in these days, not only pardon, but
approbation, for the most exceptionable verses that can fall from the pen of
man. Such madrigals are now sung with equal applause by mother and
daughter, chaste and unchaste; all unite in shamelessly breathing forth
words, (and with appropriate languishments too,) which hardly would
become the lips of a Thais! Libertines may feel pleasure in such exhibitions
—men of principle must turn away disgusted.
Set then this music of Paphos far aside; instead of songs of wantons, if
we are to have amatory odes, let us listen to the chaste pleadings of a
Petrarch, to the mutual vows of virtuous attachment. My young friend may
then sing with downcast eyes and timid voice, but no blush needs to stain
her cheek—no thrill of shame shake her bosom. She merely chants of
nature’s feelings; and Modesty veiling the sensibility she describes, angels
might “lean from heaven to hear.”

By this slight sketch, my dear readers will perceive that I mean simplicity
to be the principle and the decoration of all their actions; as it should
pervade them in the dance, so it should imbue their voice and action in
playing and in singing.
Let their attitude at the piano or the harp be easy and graceful. I strongly
exhort them to avoid a stiff, awkward, elbowing position at either; they
must observe an elegant flow of figure at both. The latter certainly admits of
most grace, as the shape of the instrument is calculated, in every respect, to
show a fine figure to advantage. The contour of the whole form, the turn
and polish of a beautiful hand and arm, the richly-slippered and well-made
foot on the pedal stops, the gentle motion of a lovely neck, and, above all,
the sweetly-tempered expression of an intelligent countenance; these are
shown at one glance when the fair performer is seated unaffectedly, yet
gracefully, at the harp.
Similar beauty of position may be seen in a lady’s management of a lute,
a guitar, a mandolin, or a lyre. The attitude at a pianoforte, or at a
harpsichord, is not so happily adapted to grace. From the shape of the
instrument, the performer must sit directly in front of a straight line of keys;
and her own posture being correspondingly erect and square, it is hardly
possible that it should not appear rather inelegant. But if it attain not the ne
plus ultra of grace, at least she may prevent an air of stiffness; she may
move her hands easily on the keys, and bear her head with that elegance of
carriage which cannot fail to impart its own character to the whole of her
figure. One of the most graceful forms that I ever saw sit at an instrument,
is that of St. Cecilia, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, playing on the organ.
It is the portrait of the late Mrs. R. B. Sheridan; and, from the simplicity of
the attitude, and the graceful elevation of the head, it is, without exception,
one of the most interesting pictures I ever beheld. A living instance of what
beauty and grace, elegance and propriety combined, can do, has always
been admired in the Marchioness of D—— by all those who ever had the
felicity to see and hear her at the piano; an engraving of her portrait, in that
attitude, would teach every female lover of the art unaffected elegance,
much more effectually than all that the advices and ability of masters can
ever be able to perform.
If ladies, in meditating on grace of deportment, would rather consult the
statues of fine sculptors, and the figures of excellent painters, than the

lessons of their dancing-masters, or the dictates of their looking-glasses, we
should, doubtless, see simplicity where we now find affectation, and a
thousand ineffable graces taking place of the present régime of absurdity
and conceit.
It was by studying the perfect sculpture of Greece and Rome, that a
certain lady of rank, eminent for her peculiarly beautiful attitudes, acquired
so great a superiority in mien above her fair contemporaries of every court
in which she became an inmate. It was by meditating on the classic pictures
of Poussin, that one of the first tragic actresses on the French stage learnt to
move and look like the daughter of the sun. And by a similar study, has our
own Melpomene caught inspiration from the pencil of Corregio and
Rubens.
Glancing at the graphic art, reminds me that some degree of proficiency
in this interesting accomplishment is also an object of study with my fair
young countrywomen. I shall not make any observation on their progress in
the art itself, but only with regard to their manner of practising it.
Both for health and beauty’s sake, they should be careful not to stoop too
much, or to sit too long in the exercise of the pencil. A bending position of
the chest and head, when frequently assumed, is apt to contract the lungs,
round the back, redden the face, and give painful digestions and headach.
An awkward posture in writing, reading, or sewing, is productive of the
same bad effects; and, what may seem almost incredible, (but many who
have witnessed the same, can, I am sure, give their evidence in support of
my representation,) there are young persons, who, when writing, drawing,
reading, or working, keep a sort of ludicrous time with their occupations, by
making a succession of unmeaning and hideous grimaces. I have seen a
pretty young woman, while writing a letter to her lover, draw up her lips,
and twist the muscles of her face in every direction that her pen moved; and
so ugly did she look during this sympathetic performance, that I could not
forbear thinking that, could her swain see the object then dictating her
vows, he would take fright at the metamorphosis, and never be made to
believe it could be the same person.
Mumbling to yourself, while reading, is also another very inelegant habit.
A person should either read determinately so much aloud as to be heard
distinctly by the company present, or peruse her book without even moving

her lips. An inward muttering, or a silent motion of the mouth, while
reading, is equally unpleasant to the observer, and disfiguring to the
observed.
In short, there is nothing, however minute in manners, however
insignificant in appearance, that does not demand some portion of attention
from a well-bred and highly-polished young woman. An author of no small
literary renown, has observed, that several of the minutest habits or acts of
some individuals, may give sufficient reasons to guess at their temper. The
choice of a gown, or even the folding and sealing of a letter, will bespeak
the shrew and the scold, the careless and the negligent. This observation I
have made myself, not only in this, but in several other countries. The
Marchioness of B—— addressed me, a few years ago, in a letter so cleanly
folded, so carefully sealed, that I was really prejudiced in her favor, ere I
saw that my surmises were right; and the flame-color ribbon, fluttering
about the Hon. Mrs. D.’s head, had given me a foreboding of her
acrimonious and fiery disposition. These fine and almost imperceptible
objects are the touches which bring the whole to its utmost perfection. They
are the varnish to the picture, the polish to the gem, the points to the
diamond.
I will go further upon this subject. The very voice of an individual, the
tone she assumes in speaking to strangers, or even familiarly to her friends,
will lead a keen observer to discover what elements her temper is made of.
The low key belongs to the sullen, sulky, obstinate, the shrill note to the
petulant, the pert, the impatient; some will pronounce the common and trite
question “how do you do?” with such harshness and raucity, that they seem
positively angry with you that you should ever do at all. Some effect a
lispingness, which at once betrays childishness and downright nonsense;
others will bid their words to gallop so swiftly, that the ablest ear is unable
to follow the rapid race, and gathers nothing but confused and unmeaning
sounds. All these extremes are to be avoided; and, although nature has
differently formed the organs of speech for different individuals, yet there is
a mode to correct nature’s own aberrations. I have heard of sensible men,
who, merely for the tone of voice which did not quite harmonize with their
ears, have dropped their connexion with women, who, in all other points
were unexceptionable.

Admit this, and another salutary truth will be made manifest. If good-
breeding and graceful refinement are ever most proper, they are always so.
It is not sufficient that Amaryllis is amiable and elegant in her whole
deportment to strangers and to her acquaintance; she must be undeviatingly
so to her most intimate friends, to nearest relations, to father, mother,
brothers, sisters, husband. She must have no dishabille for them, either of
mind or person.
This last word inclines me to pursue the hint further; to exhort my fair
readers, while I plead for consistency in manners, also to carry the analogy
to dress. If they would always appear amiable, elegant, and endearing to the
beings with whom they are to spend their lives, let them always make those
beings the first objects for whose pleasure their accomplishments, their
manners, and their dress are to be cultivated. Let them never appear before
these tender relatives in the disgusting negligence of disordered and soiled
clothes. By this has many a lovely girl lost her lover; and by this has many
an amiable wife alienated the affections of her husband.
Let me, then, in concluding this chapter, again repeat, that consistency is
the soul of female power, the charm of her fascination, the bond of her
social happiness.

CONTINUATION OF THE SAME SUBJECT.

“Observe the just gradation of degree.”
The carriage of a woman to her equals being founded on a just
appreciation of their merits, and a proper respect to herself, the same
sentiment will be found to pervade her conduct to her superiors in rank.
With regard to men, when they occupy a higher station than herself, she
must proportion reverential courtesy to them, according to the rules of court
ceremony. If she knows them merely as officers high in authority under the
king, or as nobles distinguished by their honors, her manner must then be of
calm, dignified respect. But when she finds that merit is yet higher in any of
these men than his titles, then, let her show the homage of the soul, as well
as that of the body; for real greatness ennobles the head which bows.
With regard to her own sex, the same rule must be observed. There are
certain regulations in society which are called Laws of Precedence. They
are of as much use in maintaining a due and harmonious order amongst
civilized men and women, as the law of attraction is to preserve the
heavenly bodies in their proper orbits. As one star differs from another in
magnitude and splendor, in proportion to the destiny it hath to fulfil; so do
the talents and degrees of men vary according to the allotted duties they
have to perform. Hence, as in astronomy, we think not of despising
Mercury, because he is not as large as Saturn, nor of speaking of our own
Earth as a planet of no account, because she has not four moons like Jupiter;
so, by parity of reasoning, we do not esteem our inferiors or equals the less,
because they do not fill the first orders in society. All ranks have their
proper place, the station in which they can be the most useful; and it is in
proportion as they perform their respective duties, that we must respect the
individuals.
We, therefore, regard society as a grand machine, in which each member
has the place best fitted for him; or, to make use of a more common
illustration, as a vast drama, in which every person has the part allotted to
him most appropriate to his abilities. One enacts the King, others the Lords,
others the Commons; but all obey the Great Director, who best knows what
is in man. Regarding things in this light, all arrogance, all pride, all

envyings and contempt of others, from their relative degrees, disappear, as
emotions to which we have no pretensions. We neither endowed ourselves
with high birth or eminent talents. We are altogether beings of a creation
independent of our own will; and, therefore, bearing our own honors as a
gift, not as a right, we should condescend to our inferiors, (whose place it
might have been our lot to fill,) and regard with deference our superiors,
whom Heaven, by so elevating, has intended that we should respect.
This sentiment of order in the mind, this conviction of the beautiful
harmony in a well-organized civil society, gives us dignity with our
inferiors, without alloying it with the smallest particle of pride; by keeping
them at a due distance, we merely maintain ourselves and them in the rank
in which a higher Power has placed us; and the condescension of our
general manners to them, and our kindness in their exigencies, and generous
approbation of their worth, are sufficient acknowledgments of sympathy, to
show that we avow the same nature with themselves, the same origin, the
same probation, the same end.
Our demeanor with our equals is more a matter of policy. To be
indiscreetly familiar, to allow of liberties being taken with your good-
nature; all this is likely to happen with people of the same rank with
ourselves, unless we hold our mere acquaintance at a proper distance, by a
certain reserve. A woman may be gay, ingenuous, perfectly amiable to her
associates, and yet reserved. Avoid all sudden intimacies, all needless
secret-telling, all closeting about nonsense, caballing, taking mutual
liberties with each other in regard to domestic arrangements; in short,
beware of familiarity! The kind of familiarity which is common in families,
and amongst women of the same classes in society, is that of an
indiscriminate gossiping; an interchange of thoughts without any effusion
of the heart. Then an unceremonious way of reproaching each other, for a
real or supposed neglect; a coarse manner of declaring your faults; a habit
of jangling on trifles; a habit of preferring your own whims or ease before
that of the persons about you; an indelicate way of breaking into each
other’s privacy. In short, doing everything that declares the total oblivion of
all politeness and decent manners.
This series of errors happens every day amongst brothers and sisters,
husbands and wives, and female acquaintances: and what are the

consequences? Distaste, disgust, everlasting quarrels, and perhaps total
rupture in the end!
I have seen many families bound together by the tenderest affection; I
have seen many hearts wrought into each other by the sweet amalgamation
of friendship; but with none did I ever find this delicious foretaste of the
society in Elysium, where a never-failing politeness was not mingled in all
their thoughts, words, and actions, to each other.
Deportment to superiors must ever carry with it that peculiar degree of
ceremony which their rank demands. No intimacy of intercourse with them,
no friendship and affection from them, ought ever to make us forget the
certain respect which their stations require. Thus, for a mere gentlewoman
to think of arrogating to herself the same homage of courtesy that is paid to
a lady of quality, or to deny the just tribute of precedence, in every respect,
to that lady, would be as absurd as presumptuous. Yet we see it; and
ridicule, from the higher circles, is all she derives from her vain pretensions.
By the same rule, every woman of rank must yield due courtesy to those
above her, in the just gradation, according to their elevation in the scale of
nobility. The law of courts on this subject is soon understood, and, as a
guide to my young readers, who may not yet have been sufficiently
informed, I shall, beneath, give them a list of female titles, according to
their precedence in the march of hereditary and other honors. I shall begin
with the highest rank, as it is that which, in all public processions, or in
private parties, has the right of standing or moving first.
As the crown of the whole, I set down a Queen. Then Princesses. Then
follow, in regular order, Duchesses, Marchionesses, Countesses. The Wives
of the eldest sons of Marquisses. The Wives of the younger sons of Dukes.
Daughters of Dukes. Daughters of Marquisses. Viscountesses. Wives of the
Eldest sons of Earls. Daughters of Earls. Wives of the younger sons of
Marquisses. Baronesses. Wives of the eldest sons of Viscounts. Daughters
of Viscounts. Wives of the younger sons of Earls. Wives of the eldest sons
of Barons. Daughters of Barons. Wives of the younger sons of Viscounts.
Wives of the younger sons of Barons. Wives of Baronets. Wives of Privy
Counsellors. Commoners. Wives of Judges. Wives of Knights of the Garter.
Wives of Knights of the Bath. Wives of Knights of the Thistle. Wives of
Knights Bachelors. Wives of Generals. Wives of Admirals. Wives of the
eldest sons of Baronets. Daughters of Knights, according to their fathers’

precedence. Wives of the younger sons of Baronets. Wives of Esquires and
Gentlemen. Daughters of Esquires and Gentlemen. Wives of Citizens and
Burgesses. The Wives of Military and Naval Officers of course take
precedence of each other in correspondence with the rank of their husbands.
This scale, if every young lady would bear in mind and conform to it, is a
sufficient guide to the mere ceremony of precedence; and would effectually
prevent those dangerous disputes in ball-rooms about places, and those rude
jostlings in going in and out of assemblies, which are not more disagreeable
than ill-bred. It is the perfection of fine breeding to know your place, to be
acquainted with that of others; and to fall gracefully into your station
accordingly. While the gentlewoman is content to move in the train of
female honors, the dignified decorum of step forms one graceful link in the
chain of society; but if she struggles to get before, strikes one to her right,
and the other to her left; treads down alike her equals and her superiors, in
her eagerness for pre-eminence; we fly from the shrew, and declare her
unworthy of fellowship with any class of well-ordered females.
The deference we pay to superiors, our inferiors will refund to us; and
therefore, if we wish to maintain “that proud submission, that dignified
obedience,” which binds the subject, through various gradations, to the
sovereign, we must teach our untractable spirits to bend to the cogent
reasons and salutary ordinances of high authority.
Women in every country have a greater influence than men choose to
confess.
“Men’s earliest words are taught them from her lips.”
Though haughtiness of mind will not allow them always to acknowledge
the truth, yet we see the proof in its effects; and, in consequence, must
exhort women, by yielding their deference to the laws of honorary
precedence, to teach men to obey them; and rather to emulate such
distinctions, than seek to pull down the possessors to the level of the
common herd.

CONCLUSION.

“Can comeliness of form, or shape, or air,
With comeliness of words or deeds compare?
No! those at first th’ unwary heart may gain,
But these, these only, can the heart retain.”

Gay.
When so much has been said of the body and its accoutrements, I cannot
but subjoin a few words on the intelligence which animates the frame, and
of the organ which imparts its meaning.
Connected speech is granted to mankind alone. Parrots may prate, and
monkeys chatter; but it is only to the reasonable being that power of
combining ideas, expressing their import, and uttering, in audible sounds, in
all its various gradations, the language of sense and judgment, of love and
resentment, is awarded as a gift, that gives us a proud and undeniable
superiority to all the rest of the creation.
To employ this faculty well and gracefully, is one grand object of
education. The mere organ itself, as to sound, is like a musical instrument,
to be modulated with elegance, or struck with the disorderly nerve of
coarseness and vulgarity.
I must add to what has been said before on the subject, that excessive
rapidity of speaking is, in general, even with a clear enunciation, very
disagreeable; but, when it is accompanied with a shrill voice, the effect is
inexpressibly discordant and hideous. The first orator the heathen world
ever knew, so far remedied the natural defects of his speech, (and they were
most embarrassing,) as to become the most easy and persuasive of speakers.
In like manner, when a young woman finds any difficulty or inelegance in
her organs, she ought to pay the strictest attention to rectify the fault.
Should she have too quick or encumbered an articulation, she ought to
read with extreme slowness for several hours in the day, and even pay
attention, in speaking, to check the rapidity or confusion of her utterance.
By similar antidotal means, she must attack a propensity of talking in a high
key. Better err in the opposite extreme, while she is prosecuting her cure, as

the voice will gradually and imperceptibly attain its most harmonious pitch,
than, by at first attempting the medium, most likely retain too much of the
screaming key. A clear articulation, a tempered intonation, and in a
moderate key, are essentials in the voice of an accomplished female. Her
graceful peculiarities must be the gift of nature, or the effect of cultivated
taste. Fine judgment and delicate sensibility are the best schoolmistresses
on this subject. Indeed, where, in relation to man or woman, shall we find
that an improved understanding, and enlightened mind, and a refined taste,
are not the best polishers of manners, and in all respects the most efficient
handmaids of the Muses?
Let me, then, in one short sentence, in one tender adieu, my fair readers
and endeared friends! enforce upon your minds, that if Beauty be woman’s
weapon, it must be feathered by the Graces, pointed by the eye of
Discretion, and shot by the hand of Virtue!
Look, then, my sweet pupils, not merely to your mirrors, when you
would decorate yourselves for conquest, but consult the speculum, which
will reflect your hearts and minds. Remember that it is the affections of a
sensible and reasonable soul you hope to subdue, and seek for arms likely
to carry the fortress.
He that is worthy, must love corresponding excellence. Which of you all
would wish to marry a man merely for the color of his eye, or the shape of
his leg? Think not then worse of him than you would do of yourselves; and
hope not to satisfy his better wishes with the possession of a merely
handsome wife.
Beauty of person will ever be found a dead letter, unless it be animated
with beauty of mind. “For ’tis the mind that makes the body rich.” We must,
then, not only cultivate the shape, the complexion, the air, the attire, the
manners, but most assiduously must our attention be devoted to teach “the
young idea how to shoot,” and to fashion the unfolding mind to judgment
and virtue. By such culture, it will not be merely the charming girl, the
captivating woman we shall present to the world, but the dutiful daughter,
affectionate sister, tender wife, judicious mother, faithful friend, and
amiable acquaintance.
Let these, then, be fair images which will form themselves on the models
drawn by my not inexperienced pen! Let me see Beauty, whose soul is

virtue, approach me with the chastened step of Modesty; and, ere she
advances from behind the heavenly cloud that envelops her, I shall behold
Love, and all the graces, hovering in air to adorn and attend her charms.
This may be thy picture, lovely daughter of Albion! Make thyself, then
worthy of the likeness, and thou wilt fulfil the fondest wish of thine
unknown friend.

APPENDIX.

ON THE USE OF CORSETS.

The following pages are abridged by an eminent English physician from
an Essay on the Use of Corsets, by Soemmerring, the German physiologist:
Fashion lives on novelty, and we have on this account much charity for
its wanderings and eccentricities. Bonnets, with a snout as long as an
elephant’s proboscis, or a margin as broad as a Winchester bushel, are
merely ridiculous. Shoulders that look like wings, and sleeves as wide as a
petticoat, we think are not particularly graceful; but they have at least the
merit of being airy, and we take no offence. We cannot, however, extend our
indulgence to the compressed waist, which is the rage at present. We know
that as often as the waist is lengthened to its natural limits, this tendency to
abridge its diameter appears; and we confess we are puzzled to account for
the fact; for surely it is strange, that a permanent prepossession should exist
in favor of a mode of dress which is at once ugly, unnatural, and pernicious.
Were fashion under the guidance of taste, the principles of drapery in
painting and sculpture would never be lost sight of in its changes. The
clothes that cover us may be disposed in an infinite variety of forms,
without violating those rules which the artist is careful to observe. The true
form of the body ought to be disclosed to the eye, without the shape being
exhibited in all its minutiæ, as in the dress of a harlequin; but in no case
should the natural proportions (supposing the figure to be good) be
changed. Ask the sculptor what he thinks of a fashionable waist, pinched till
it rivals the lady’s neck in tenuity, and he will tell you it is monstrous.
Consult the physician, and you will learn that this is one of those follies in
which no female can long indulge with impunity; for health, and even life,
are often sacrificed to it.
Corsets are used partly as a warm covering to the chest, and partly to
furnish a convenient attachment to other parts of the female dress. This is
all proper and correct; but to these uses fashion superadds others,
originating in fantastical notions of beauty. Corsets are employed to modify
the shape, to render the chest as small below, and as broad above, as
possible, and to increase the elevation, fulness, and prominence of the
bosom. To show how this affects the condition of the body, we must begin

by giving a short description of the thorax or chest, which is the subject of
this artificial compression.
Every one who has seen a skeleton, knows that the chest consists of a
cavity protected by a curious frame-work of bones. These are, 1st, the back-
bone, (consisting of vertebræ, or short bones jointed into one another,)
which sustains the whole upper part of the trunk; 2d, the breast-bone, about
seven or eight inches long, and composed of three pieces; and 3dly, the ribs,
of which there are generally twentyfour. The twelve ribs on each side are all
fixed to the back-bone behind; seven of these, the seven uppermost, are also
attached to the breast-bone before, and are, therefore, called true ribs. The
eighth rib has its end turned up, and rests on the seventh; the ninth rests in
the same way on the eighth; but the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth are not
connected with one another in front at all. The fore extremity of each rib
consists not of bone, but of an elastic substance called cartilage. The
elasticity of this substance, combined with the oblique position of the ribs,
constitutes a beautiful provision, in consequence of which the chest
enlarges and contracts its volume, to afford free play to the lungs.
We now wish to call attention to the form of this cavity, which, as we
have seen, is surrounded and protected by the back-bone, ribs, and breast-
bone, and is called the thorax, or chest. The uppermost pair of ribs, which
lie just at the bottom of the neck, are very short; the next pair is rather
longer; the third longer still; and thus they go on increasing in length to the
seventh pair, or last true ribs, after which the length diminishes, but without
materially contracting the size of the cavity, because the false ribs only go
round a part of the body. Hence the chest has a sort of conical shape, or it
may be compared to the bee-hives used in this country, the narrow or
pointed end being next the neck, and the broad end undermost. The natural
form of the thorax, in short, is just the reverse of the fashionable shape of
the waist. The latter is narrow below, and wide above; the former is narrow
above, and wide below.
The lower part of the thorax is also much more compressible, and of
course more easily injured by ligatures than the upper. In the upper part, the
bones form a complete circle; and, from the small obliquity of the ribs, this
circle presents a great power of resistance to external pressure. But the last
five ribs, called the false ribs, besides being placed more obliquely, become
weaker as they decrease in length, and having no support in front, their

power of resisting external pressure is probably six times less than that of
the true ribs. Hence ligatures applied to this part of the body may contract
the natural size of the cavity perhaps one half. Nature, in this instance, has
entrusted the belle with a discretionary power, guarding against its abuse,
however, by severe penalties. If she chooses to brave the consequences, she
may always, with the help of lace and cord, produce a great change on this
part of her person.
From the great care nature has bestowed to strengthen the outer shell of
the thorax, and to combine mobility with strength, we may judge of the
importance of the organs within, and of the value of free motion to their
healthy action. It is a further proof of this, as Soemmerring observes, that
the ribs are the first part of the bony frame-work which nature forms; for, in
the unborn child, no other bones except those of the ear are so perfect. The
contents of the thorax are,—first, the heart, which is the centre of the
circulating system, and which, for the sake of its metaphorical offices, every
lady must be anxious to keep from injury;—next, the lungs, which occupy
by far the largest space, and of the delicacy of whose operations every one
may judge. There are, besides, either within the thorax, or in juxtaposition
with it, the stomach, liver, and kidneys, with the œsophagus, the trachea, or
windpipe, part of the intestines, and many nerves, all intimately connected
with the vital powers. Most of these organs are not only of primary
importance in themselves, but, through the nerves, arteries, &c., their
influence extends to the head, and the remotest parts of the limbs, so that
when they are injured, health is poisoned at its source, and the mischief
always travels to other parts of the system.
Imagine, now, what is the consequence of applying compression, by
corsets of some unyielding material, to a cavity enclosing so many delicate
organs, whose free action is essential to health. First, the lowest part of the
shell of the thorax yields most; the false ribs, and the lower true ribs, are
pressed inwards; the whole viscera in this part of the body, including part of
the intestines, are squeezed close together and forced upwards; and, as the
pressure is continued above, they are forced higher still. If the lacing is
carried further, the breast-bone is raised, and sometimes bent; the collar-
bone protrudes its inner extremity; and the shoulder-blades are forced
backwards. The under part of the lungs is pressed together, and the entrance
of the blood into it hindered; the abdominal viscera, being least protected,

suffer severely; the stomach is compressed, its distention prevented, and its
situation and form changed, giving rise to imperfect digestion; the blood is
forced up to the head, where it generates various complaints; the liver has
its shape altered, and its functions obstructed; the bones having their natural
motions constrained, distortion ensues, and the high shoulder, the twisted
spine, or breast-bone, begins at last to manifest itself through the
integuments and the clothes.
Another effect of tight corsets, says the essayist, is, that those who have
been long so closely laced, become at last unable to hold themselves erect,
or move with comfort without them, but, as is very justly said, fall together,
in consequence of the natural form and position of the ribs being altered.
The muscles of the back are weakened and crippled, and cannot maintain
themselves in their natural position for any length of time. The spine, too,
no longer accustomed to bear the destined weight of the body, bends and
sinks down. Where tight lacing is practised, young women, from fifteen to
twenty years of age, are found so dependent upon their corsets, that they
faint whenever they lay them aside, and therefore are obliged to have
themselves laced before going to sleep. For as soon as the thorax and
abdomen are relaxed, by being deprived of their usual support, the blood
rushing downwards, in consequence of the diminished resistance to its
motion, empties the vessels of the head, and thus occasions fainting.
“From 1760 to about 1770,” says Soemmerring, “it was the fashion in
Berlin and other parts of Germany, and also in Holland a few years ago, to
apply corsets to children. This practice fell into disuse, in consequence of its
being observed, that children who did not wear corsets grew up straight,
while those who were treated with this extraordinary care, got by it a high
shoulder or a hunch. Many families might be named, in which parental
fondness selected the handsomest of several boys to put in corsets, and the
result was, that these alone were hunched. The deformity was attributed at
first to the improper mode of applying the corsets, till it was discovered that
no child thus invested, grew up straight, not to mention the risk of
consumption and rupture which were likewise incurred by using them. I, for
my part, affirm, that I do not know any woman who, by tight lacing, (that is,
by artificial means,) has obtained ‘a fine figure,’ in whom I could not, by
accurate examination, point out either a high shoulder, oblique compressed
ribs, a lateral incurvation of the spine in the form of an italic S, or some

other distortion. I have had opportunities of verifying this opinion among
ladies of high condition, who, as models of fine form, were brought forward
for the purpose of putting me to silence.”
Young ladies in course of time hope to become wives, and wives to
become mothers. Even in this last stage, few females have the courage to
resist a practice which is in general use, though to them it is trebly
injurious. But it is sufficient to glance at this branch of the subject, on
which, for obvious reasons, we cannot follow our medical instructer. It is
lamentable, however, that mothers who have themselves experienced the
bitter fruits of tight lacing, still permit their daughters to indulge in it. There
is, in truth, no tyranny like the tyranny of fashion. “I have found mothers of
discernment and experience,” says Soemmerring, “who predicted that in
their 25th year, a hunch would inevitably be the lot of their daughters,
whom they nevertheless allowed to wear corsets, because they were afraid
to make their children singular.”
But it is time to speak of the diseases produced by the passion for slender
waists. “One is astonished,” says Soemmerring, “at the number of diseases
which corsets occasion. Those I have subjoined rest on the authority of the
most eminent physicians. Tight lacing produces—
“Headach, giddiness, tendency to fainting, pain in the eyes, pain and
ringing in the ears, bleeding at the nose, shortness of breath, spitting of
blood, consumption, derangement of the circulation, palpitation of the heart,
water in the chest, loss of appetite, squeamishness, eructations, vomiting of
blood, depraved digestion, flatulence, diarrhœa, colic pains, induration of
the liver, dropsy, and rupture. It is also followed by melancholy, hysteria,
and many diseases peculiar to the female constitution, which it is not
necessary to enumerate in detail.”
But the injury does not fall merely on the inward structure of the body,
but also on its outward beauty, and on the temper and feelings with which
that beauty is associated. Beauty is in reality but another name for that
expression of countenance which is the index of sound health, intelligence,
good feelings, and peace of mind. All are aware, that uneasy feelings,
existing habitually in the breast, speedily exhibit their signature on the
countenance; and that bitter thoughts, or a bad temper, spoil the human face
divine of its grace. But it is not so generally known that irksome or painful

sensations, though merely of a physical nature, by a law equally certain, rob
the temper of its sweetness, and, as a consequence, the countenance of the
more ethereal and better part of its beauty. Pope attributes the rudeness of a
person usually bland and polished, to the circumstance, that “he had not
dined;” in other words, his stomach was in bad order. But there are many
other physical pains besides hunger that sour the temper; and, for our part,
if we found ourselves sitting at dinner with a man whose body was girt on
all sides by board and bone, like the north pole by thick-ribbed ice, we
should no more expect to find grace, politeness, amenity, vivacity, and
good-humor, in such a companion, than in Prometheus with a vulture
battening on his vitals, or in Cerberus, whose task is to growl all day long in
his chains.

ON THE LADIES’ PASSION FOR LEVELLING ALL
DISTINCTION OF DRESS.

Foreigners observe that there are no ladies in the world more beautiful, or
more ill-dressed, than those of England. Our countrywomen have been
compared to those pictures, where the face is the work of a Raphael, but the
draperies thrown out by some empty pretender, destitute of taste, and
entirely unacquainted with design.
If I were a poet, I might observe on this occasion, that so much beauty,
set off with all the advantages of dress, would be too powerful an antagonist
for the opposite sex; and therefore it was wisely ordered that our ladies
should want taste, lest their admirers should entirely want reason.
But, to confess the truth, I do not find they have greater aversion to fine
clothes than the women of any other country whatsoever. I cannot fancy
that a shopkeeper’s wife in Cheapside has a greater tenderness for the
fortune of her husband, than a citizen’s wife in Paris; or that miss in a
boarding-school is more an economist in dress than mademoiselle in a
nunnery.
Although Paris may be accounted the soil in which almost every fashion
takes its rise, its influence is never so general there as with us. They study
there the happy method of uniting grace and fashion, and never excuse a
woman for being awkwardly dressed, by saying her clothes are in the mode.
A Frenchwoman is a perfect architect in dress; she never, with Gothic
ignorance, mixes the orders; she never tricks out a squabby Doric shape
with Corinthian finery; or, to speak without metaphor, she conforms to
general fashion only when it happens not to be repugnant to private beauty.
The English ladies, on the contrary, seem to have no other standard of
grace but the run of the town. If fashion gives the word, every distinction of
beauty, complexion, of stature, ceases. Sweeping trains, Prussian bonnets,
and trollopees, as like each other as if cut from the same piece, level all to
one standard. The Mall, the gardens, and playhouses, are filled with ladies
in uniform; and their whole appearance shows as little variety of taste as if
their clothes were bespoke by the colonel of a marching regiment, or
fancied by the artist who dresses the three battalions of guards.

But not only the ladies of every shape and complexion, but of every age
too, are possessed of this unaccountable passion for levelling all distinction
in dress. The lady of no quality travels first behind the lady of some quality;
and a woman of sixty is as gaudy as her grand-daughter. A friend of mine, a
good-natured old man, amused me the other day with an account of his
journey to the Mall. It seems, in his walk thither, he, for some time,
followed a lady, who, as he thought, by her dress, was a girl of fifteen. It
was airy, elegant, and youthful. My old friend had called up all his poetry
on this occasion, and fancied twenty Cupids prepared for execution in every
folding of her white negligee. He had prepared his imagination for an
angel’s face;—but what was his mortification to find that the imaginary
goddess was no other than his cousin Hannah, some years older than
himself!
But to give it in his own words: “After the transports of our first salute,”
said he, “were over, I could not avoid running my eye over her whole
appearance. Her gown was of cambric, cut short before, in order to discover
a high-heeled shoe, which was buckled almost at the toe. Her cap consisted
of a few bits of cambric, and flowers of painted paper stuck on one side of
her head. Her bosom, that had felt no hand but the hand of time these
twenty years, rose, suing to be pressed. I could, indeed, have wished her
more than a handkerchief of Paris net, to shade her beauties; for, as Tasso
says of the rose-bud, ‘Quanto si nostra men, tanto e pin bella.’ A female
breast is generally thought most beautiful as it is more sparingly discovered.
“As my cousin had not put on all this finery for nothing, she was at that
time sallying out to the Park, where I had overtaken her. Perceiving,
however, that I had on my best wig, she offered, if I would squire her there,
to send home the footman. Though I trembled for our reception in public,
yet I could not, with any civility, refuse; so, to be as gallant as possible, I
took her hand in my arm, and thus we marched on together.
“When we made our entry at the Park, two antiquated figures, so polite
and so tender, soon attracted the eyes of the company. As we made our way
among the crowds, who were out to show their finery as well as we,
wherever we came, I perceived we brought good humor with us. The polite
could not forbear smiling, and the vulgar burst out into a horse-laugh at our
grotesque figures. Cousin Hannah, who was perfectly conscious of the
rectitude of her own appearance, attributed all this mirth to the oddity of

mine; while I as cordially placed the whole to her account. Thus, from
being two of the best-natured creatures alive, before we got half way up the
Mall, we both began to grow peevish, and like two mice on a string,
endeavored to revenge the impertinence of others upon ourselves. ‘I am
amazed, cousin Jeffery,’ says Miss, ‘that I can never get you to dress like a
Christian. I knew we should have the eyes of the Park upon us, with your
great wig, so frizzled, and yet so beggarly, and your monstrous muff. I hate
those odious muffs.’ I could have patiently borne a criticism on all the rest
of my equipage; but as I had always a peculiar veneration for my muff, I
could not forbear being piqued a little; and throwing my eyes with a spiteful
air on her bosom, ‘I could heartily wish, madam,’ replied I, ‘that, for your
sake, my muff was cut into a tippet.’
“As my cousin, by this time, was grown heartily ashamed of her
gentleman usher, and as I was never very fond of any kind of exhibition
myself, it was mutually agreed to retire for a while to one of the seats, and,
from that retreat, remark on others as freely as they had remarked on us.
“When seated, we continued silent for some time, employed in very
different speculations. I regarded the whole company, now passing in
review before me, as drawn out merely for my amusement. For my
entertainment, the beauty had, all that morning, been improving her charms:
the beau had put on lace, and the young doctor a big wig, merely to please
me. But quite different were the sentiments of cousin Hannah: she regarded
every well-dressed woman as a victorious rival; hated every face that
seemed dressed in good humor, or wore the appearance of greater happiness
than her own. I perceived her uneasiness, and attempted to lessen it, by
observing that there was no company in the Park to-day. To this she readily
assented; ‘and yet,’ says she, ‘it is full enough of scrubs of one kind or
another.’ My smiling at this observation gave her spirits to pursue the bent
of her inclination, and now she began to exhibit her skill in secret history, as
she found me disposed to listen. ‘Observe,’ says she to me, ‘that old woman
in tawdry silk, and dressed out beyond the fashion. That is Miss Biddy
Evergreen. Miss Biddy, it seems, has money; and as she considers that
money was never so scarce as it is now, she seems resolved to keep what
she has to herself. She is ugly enough, you see; yet, I assure you, she has
refused several offers, to my knowledge, within this twelvemonth. Let me
see;—three gentlemen from Ireland, who study the law, two waiting

captains, her doctor, and a Scotch preacher, who had liked to have carried
her off. All her time is passed between sickness and finery. Thus she spends
the whole week in a close chamber, with no other company but her monkey,
her apothecary, and cat; and comes dressed out to Park every Sunday, to
show her airs, to get new lovers, to catch a new cold, and to make new work
for the doctor.
“‘There goes Mrs. Roundabout, I mean the fat lady in the lustring
trollopee. Between you and I, she is but a cutler’s wife. See how she’s
dressed, as fine as hands and pins can make her, while her two marriageable
daughters, like bunters in stuff gowns, are now taking six-penny-worth of
tea at the White-conduit house. Odious puss, how she waddles along, with
her train two yards behind her! She puts me in mind of my Lord Bantam’s
Indian sheep, which are obliged to have their monstrous tails trundled along
in a go-cart. For all her airs, it goes to her husband’s heart to see four yards
of good lustring wearing against the ground, like one of his knives on a
grindstone. To speak my mind, cousin Jeffery, I never liked those tails: for
suppose a young fellow should be rude, and the lady should offer to step
back in the fright, instead of retiring, she treads upon her train, and falls
fairly on her back; and then you know, cousin,—her clothes may be spoiled.
“‘Ah! Miss Mazzard! I knew we should not miss her in the Park; she in
the monstrous Prussian bonnet. Miss, though so very fine, was bred a
milliner; and might have had some custom, if she had minded her business;
but the girl was fond of finery, and, instead of dressing her customers, laid
out all her goods in adorning herself. Every new gown she put on impaired
her credit; she still, however, went on, improving her appearance, and
lessening her little fortune, and is now, you see, become a belle and a
bankrupt.’
“My cousin was proceeding in her remarks, which were interrupted by
the approach of the very lady she had been so freely describing. Miss had
perceived her at a distance, and approached to salute her. I found by the
warmth of the two ladies’ protestations, that they had been long intimate,
esteemed friends and acquaintance. Both were so pleased at this happy
rencounter, that they were resolved not to part for the day. So we all crossed
the Park together, and I saw them into a hackney-coach at St. James’s.”
Oliver Goldsmith.

RECIPES.

Paste of Palermo.

This paste for the hands, to use instead of soap, preserves them from
chapping, smooths their surface, and renders them soft.
Taken, pound of soft soap, half a pint of salad oil, the same quantity of
spirits of wine, the juice of three lemons, a little silver sand, and a sufficient
quantity of what perfume pleases the sense. The oil and soap must be first
boiled together in an earthen pipkin. The other ingredients to be added after
boiling; and, when cool, amalgamate into a paste with the hands.

Fard.

This useful paste is good for taking off sunburnings, effects of weather
on the face, and accidental cutaneous eruptions. It must be applied at going
to bed. First wash the face with its usual ablution, and when dry, rub this
fard all over it, and go to rest with it on the skin. This is excellent for almost
constant use. Take two ounces of oil of sweet almonds, ditto of spermaceti;
melt them in a pipkin over a slow fire. When they are dissolved and mixed,
take it off the fire, and stir into it one tablespoonful of fine honey. Continue
stirring it till it is cold, and then it is fit for use.

Lip Salve.

A quarter of a pound of hard marrow from the marrow-bone. Melt it over
a slow fire, as it dissolves gradually, pour the liquid marrow into an earthen
pipkin; then add to it an ounce of spermaceti, twenty raisins of the sun,
stoned, and a small portion of alcanna root, sufficient to color it a bright
vermilion. Simmer these ingredients over a slow fire for ten minutes, then
strain the whole through muslin; and, while hot, stir into it one teaspoonful
of the balsam of Peru. Pour it into the boxes in which it is to remain; it will
there stiffen, and become fit for use.

Lavender Water.

Take of rectified spirits of wine half a pint, essential oil of lavender two
drachms, otto of roses five drops. Mix all together in a bottle, and cork it for
use.

Unction de Maintenon.

The use of this is to remove freckles. The mode of application is this:—
Wash the face at night with elder-flower water, then anoint it with the
unction. In the morning cleanse your skin from its oily adhesion, by
washing it copiously in rose-water.
Take of Venice soap an ounce, dissolve it in half an ounce of lemon-juice,
to which add of oil of bitter-almonds and deliquidated oil of tartar, each a
quarter of an ounce. Let the mixture be placed in the sun till it acquires the
consistence of ointment. When in this state, add three drops of the oil of
rhodium, and keep it for use.

Creme de l’Enclos.

This is an excellent wash, to be used night and morning, for the removal
of tan.
Take half a pint of milk, with the juice of a lemon, and a spoonful of
white brandy, boil the whole, and skim it clear from all scum. When cool, it
is ready for use.

Pommade de Seville.

This simple application is much in request with the Spanish ladies, for
taking off the effects of the sun, and to render the complexion brilliant.
Take equal parts of lemon-juice and white of eggs. Beat the whole
together in a varnished earthen pipkin, and set on a slow fire. Stir the fluid
with a wooden spoon till it has acquired the consistence of soft pomatum.
Perfume it with some sweet essence, and before you apply it, carefully
wash the face with rice water.

Beaume à l’Antique.

This is a very fine cure for chapped lips. Take four ounces of the oil of
roses, half an ounce of white wax, and half an ounce of spermaceti; melt
them in a glass vessel, and stir them with a wooden spoon; pour it out into
glass cups for use.

Wash for the Hair.

This is a cleanser and brightener of the head and hair, and should be
applied in the morning.
Beat up the whites of six eggs into a froth, and with that anoint the head
close to the roots of the hair. Leave it to dry on; then wash the head and hair
thoroughly with a mixture of rum and rose-water in equal quantities.

Aura and Cephalus.

This curious recipe is of Grecian origin, as its name plainly indicates, and
it is said to have been very efficacious in preventing, or even removing,
premature wrinkles from the face of the Athenian fair.
Put some powder of the best myrrh upon an iron plate, sufficiently heated
to melt the gum gently, and when it liquifies, hold your face over it, at a
proper distance to receive the fumes without inconvenience; and that you
may reap the whole benefit of the fumigation, cover your head with a
napkin. It must be observed, however, that if the applicant feels any
headache, she must desist, as the remedy will not suit her constitution, and
ill consequences might possibly ensue.

Madame Recamier’s Pommade.

This was communicated by this lady as being used in France and Italy, by
those who professionally, or by choice, are engaged in exercises which
require long and great exertions of the limbs, as dancing, playing on
instruments, &c.

Take any suitable quantity of Axungia Cervi, i. e. the fat of a red stag or
hart; add to it the same quantity of olive oil, (Florence oil is preferable to
any of the kind,) and half the quantity of virgin wax; melt the whole in an
earthen vessel, well glazed, over a slow fire, and, when properly mixed,
leave it to cool. This ointment has been applied also with considerable
efficacy in cases of rheumatism.

A Wash for the Face.

This recipe is well known in France, and much extolled by the ladies of
that country as efficacious and harmless.
Take equal parts of the seeds of the melon, pompion, gourd, and
cucumber, pounded and reduced to powder or meal; add to it fresh cream,
sufficient to dilute the flour; beat all up together, adding a sufficient
quantity of milk, as it may be required, to make an ointment, and then apply
it to the face; leave it there for half an hour, and then wash it off with warm
soft water.

A Paste for the Skin.

This may be recommended in cases when the skin seems to get too
loosely attached to the muscles.
Boil the whites of four eggs in rose-water, add to it a sufficient quantity
of alum; beat the whole together till it takes the consistence of a paste. This
will give, when applied, great firmness to the skin.

A Wash to give Lustre to the Face.

Infuse wheat-bran well sifted, for three or four hours in white wine
vinegar; add to it five yolks of eggs and a grain or two of ambergris, and
distil the whole. When the bottle is carefully corked, keep it for twelve or
fifteen days before you make use of it.

Pimpernel Water.

Pimpernel is a most wholesome plant, and often used on the continent for
the purpose of whitening the complexion; it is there in so high reputation,
that it is said generally, that it ought to be continually on the toilet of every
lady who cares for the brightness of her skin.

Eau de Veau.

Boil a calf’s foot in four quarts of river water till it is reduced to half the
quantity. Add half a pound of rice, and boil it with crumb of white bread
steeped in milk, a pound of fresh butter, and the whites of five fresh eggs;
mix with them a small quantity of camphor and alum, and distil the whole.
This recipe may be strongly recommended; it is most beneficial to the skin,
which it lubricates and softens to a very comfortable degree. The best
manner of distilling these ingredients is in the balneum mariæ; that is, in a
bottle placed in boiling water.

Rose Water.

Put some roses into water, add to them a few drops of acid; the vitriolic
acid seems to be preferable to any—soon the water will assume both the
color and perfume of the roses.

Another.

Take two pounds of rose-leaves, place them on a napkin tied round the
edges of a basin filled with hot water, and put a dish of cold water upon the
leaves; keep the bottom water hot, and change the water at top as soon as it
begins to grow warm; by this kind of distillation you will extract a great
quantity of the essential oil of the roses by a process which cannot be
expensive, and will prove very beneficial.

Virgin Milk.

A publication of this kind would certainly be looked upon as an imperfect
performance, if we omitted to say a few words upon this famous cosmetic.
It consists of a tincture of benjoin, precipitated by water. The tincture of

benjoin is obtained by taking a certain quantity of that gum, pouring spirits
of wine upon it, and boiling it till it becomes a rich tincture. If you pour a
few drops of this tincture into a glass of water, it will produce a mixture
which will assume all the appearance of milk, and retain a very agreeable
perfume. If the face is washed with this mixture, it will, by calling the
purple stream of the blood to the external fibres of the epidermis, produce
on the cheeks a beautiful rosy color; and, if left on the face to dry, it will
render it clear and brilliant. It also removes spots, freckles, pimples,
erysipelatous eruptions, &c. &c. if they have not been of long standing on
the skin.

Lavender Water.

Take four handfuls of dried lavender flowers, and sprinkle on them one
quart of brandy, the same quantity of white wine and rose-water; leave them
to remain six days in a large bottle well-corked up; let the liquor be distilled
and poured off.

Sweet-scented Water.

This agreeably-scented water is not only a pleasant cosmetic, but also of
great use in nervous disorders.
Put one quart of rose-water, and the same quantity of orange-water, into a
large and wide-mouthed glass; strew upon it two handfuls of jessamine
flowers, put the glass in the balneum mariæ, or on a slow fire, and when it
is distilled, add to it a scruple of musk and the same quantity of ambergris.

Eau d’Ange.

Pound in a mortar fifteen cloves and one pound of cinnamon, and put the
whole into a quart of water, with four grains of anniseed; let it stand over a
charcoal fire twentyfour hours, then strain off the liquor, and put it up for
use. This perfume is most excellent, and will do well for the hands, face,
and hair, to which it communicates a very agreeable scent.

Remedy for the Toothache.

In two drachms of rectified spirits of wine dissolve one drachm of
camphire, five grains of prepared opium, and ten drops of oil of box; mix
them well, and keep it well corked for use. If the pain arise from a hollow
tooth, four or five drops on cotton to be put into the tooth; or six or seven
drops to be put on cotton into the ear on the side where the pain is felt.
Should the patient not feel easier in a quarter of an hour, the same may be
repeated. It has never failed on the second application.

An excellent Eye-Water.

Take six ounces of rectified spirits of wine, dissolve in it one drachm of
camphire, and half a pint of elder-flower water. Wash the eyes night and
morning with this liquid; it clears the vision, and strengthens the sight.

Dentifrice.

The following is one of the best recipes for tooth-powder:—
Take of prepared chalk six ounces, cassia powder, half an ounce, orris-
root, an ounce. These are to be well mixed, and may be colored with red
lake, or any other innocent substance, according to the fancy of the user.
This dentifrice is to be used with a firm brush every morning; the teeth
should also be brushed before going to bed, but it is seldom necessary to
use the powder more than once a day.

THE END.

Transcriber’s Notes
Minor errors in punctuation and spelling have been corrected.

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