you should acknowledge that we have helped you, by voluntarily making ourselves ugly. Your superiority in beauty is made up of two things; first, the care which you take to increase your charms; secondly, the zeal which we have shown to heighten them by the contrast of our finished ugliness-the shadow which we supply to your sunshine.

Your long, pliant, wavy tresses are all the more beautiful because we cut our hair short; your hands are all the whiter, smaller, and more delicate, because we reserve to ourselves those toils and exercises which make the hands large and hard. We have devoted entirely to your use flowers, feathers, ribbons, jewellery, silks, gold and silver embroidery. Still more to increase the difference between the sexes, which is your greatest charm, and to give you the handsome share, we have divided with you the hues of nature. To you we have given the colours that are rich and splendid, or soft and harmonious; for ourselves, we have kept those that are dark and dead. We have given you sun and light; we have kept night and dark

ness.

We have monopolised the hard, stony roads that enlarge the feet; we have let you walk only on carpets.

Long hair in woman is an essential element of beauty. The Roman ladies generally wore it long, and dressed it in a variety of ways, bedecking it with gold, silver, pearls, and other ornaments. On the contrary, the men amongst the Greeks and Romans, and amongst the Jews at a later period, wore their hair short, as may be collected from books, medals, statues, and other models or remains. Amongst the Greeks we know that both sexes, a few days before marriage, cut off and consecrated their hair as an offering to their favourite deities. It was also customary amongst them to hang the hair of the dead on the doors of their houses previous to interment. The ancients imagined that no one could die till a lock of hair was cut off; and this act they supposed was performed by the invisible hand of death, or some other messenger of the gods.

"How often do we see a really good face made quite ugly by a total inattention to lines. Sometimes the hair is pushed

into the cheeks, and squared at the forehead, so as to give a most extraordinary pinched shape to the face. Let the oval, where it exists, be always preserved: where it does not, let the hair be so humoured that the deficiency shall not be perceived. Nothing is more common than to see a face which is somewhat too large below, made to look grossly large and coarse, by contracting the hair on the forehead and cheek; but the hair should be made to fall partially over, so as to shade and soften off the lower exuberance. A good treatise, with examples in outline of the defects, would be of some value upon a lady's toilet, who would wish to preserve her great privilege-the supremacy of beauty. Some press the hair down close to the face, which is to lose the very characteristic of hair—ease and freedom. Let her locks, said Anacreon, lie as they like; the Greek gives them life and a will. Some ladies wear the hair like blinkers; you always suspect they will shy if you approach them. A lady's head-dress, whether in a portrait or for her daily wear, should, as in old portraits by Rembrandt and Titian, go off into shade, not to be seen too clearly, and hard or round.'

The custom of decking the hair with pearls and gems, although not a modern invention, is still in vogue with royalty and courtly circles; yet the author of The Honeymoon thus repudiates the fashion :

-Thus modestly attired,

A half-blown rose stuck in thy braided hair,

With no more diamonds than those eyes are made of,
No deeper rubies than compose thy lips,

Nor pearls more precious than inhabit them;

With the pure red and white, which that same hand
Which blends the rainbow, mingles in thy cheeks;
This well-proportioned form (think not I flatter)

In graceful motion to harmonious sounds,

And thy free tresses dancing in the wind,

Thou❜lt fix as much observance, as chaste dames
Can meet without a blush."

The Roman patrician ladies had from two to three hundred

* Blackwood,

slaves chiefly appointed to attend their persons. Their hair used to be perfumed and powdered with gold dust.

"Of all the articles of luxury and ostentation known to the Romans, pearls seem to have been the most esteemed. They were worn on all parts of the dress, and such was the diversity of their size, purity, and value, that they were found to suit all classes, from those of moderate to those of the most colossal fortune. The famous pearl earrings of Cleopatra are said to have been worth about £160,000, and Julius Cæsar is said to have presented Servilia, the mother of Brutus, with a pearl for which he had paid above £48,000; and though no reasonable doubt can be entertained in regard to the extreme exaggeration of these and similar statements, the fact that the largest and finest pearls brought immense prices is beyond all question. It has been said that the wish to become master of the pearls with which it was supposed to abound, was one of the motives which induced Julius Cæsar to invade Britain. But, though a good many were met with in various parts of the country, they were of little or no value, being small and ill-coloured. After pearls and diamonds, the emerald held the highest place in the estimation of the Romans.”*

In France, during the reign of Louis XIV. the use of diamonds revived. Robes were embroidered with them, and besides necklaces, aigrettes, and bracelets, they were employed to ornament the stomachers, shoulders, waistbands, and skirts of the dress. This costly fashion subsided about the end of the French Revolution.

The favourites of fortune are too frequently the servile votaries of fashion; and this passion for dress entails many social evils. While it fosters imperious pride in its victim, it destroys all the finer sensibilities of our nature. The gentle hand of charity, that ministers to the children of want, belongs not to the flaunting lady of fashion; her ambition is rather to dazzle and bewilder the gazing, thoughtless multitude-to become the "cynosure of all eyes." To the reflective mind, such a

* M'Culloch.

spectacle is suggestive of emotions far opposite to those of pleasure. To such the luxury of doing good is unknown; for their benefactions, instead of being diffusive, are directed exclusively to self. Self is the idol they adore and worship; it is idolatry of the worst type, and the most to be deprecated by noble minds.

"There are certain moralists in the world, who labour under the impression that it is no matter what people wear, or how they put on their apparel. Such people cover themselves up— they do not dress. No one doubts that the mind is more important than the body, the jewel than the setting; and yet the virtue of the one and the brilliancy of the other is enhanced by the mode in which they are presented to the senses. Let a woman have every virtue under the sun, if she is slatternly, or even inappropriate in her dress, her merits will be more than half obscured. If, being young, she is untidy, or, being old, fantastic, or slovenly, her mental qualifications stand a chance of being passed over with indifference." *

A right loyal scribe thus enacts the champion for beauty: Plain women were formerly so common that they were termed ordinary, to signify the frequency of their occurrence; in these happier days the phrase extraordinary would be more applicable. However parsimonious, or even cruel, Nature may have been in other respects, they all cling to admiration by some solitary tenure that redeems them from the unqualified imputation of unattractiveness. One has an eye, that, like Charity, covers a multitude of sins ; another is a female Samson, whose strength consists in her hair; a third holds your affections by her teeth; a fourth is a Cinderella, who wins hearts by her pretty little foot; a fifth makes an irresistible appeal from her face to her figure, and so on to the end of the catalogue. An expressive countenance may always be claimed in the absence of any definite charm; if even this be questionable, the party generally contrives to get a reputation for great cleverness: and if that too be inhumanly disputed, envy itself must allow that she is "excessively amiable."

* Chambers.

Countenance, however, is not within the reach of any of these substances or combinations. It is a species of moral beauty, as superior to mere charm of surface as mind is to matter. It is, in fact, visible spirit, legible intellect, diffusing itself over the features, and enabling minds to commune with each other by some secret sympathy unconnected with the senses. The heart has a silent echo in the face, which frequently carries to us a conviction diametrically opposite to the audible expressions of the mouth; and we see through the eyes into the understanding, long before it can communicate with us by utterance. This emanation of character is the light of soul irradiating the countenance, as the sun illumines the face of Nature before he rises above the earth to commence his celestial career. Of this indefinable charm all women are alike susceptible: it is to them what gunpowder is to warriors, it levels all distinctions, and gives to the plain and the pretty, to the timid and the brave, an equal chance of making conquests.

Of course, the immediate effect of a well-chosen feminine toilet operates differently in different minds. In some it causes a sense of actual pleasure; in others, a consciousness of passive enjoyment. In some, it is intensely felt while it is present; in others, only missed when it is gone.

Beauty is the flowering of virtue. The true art of assisting beauty consists in embellishing the whole person by the proper ornaments of virtuous and commendable qualities. By this help alone it is, that those who are the favourites of Nature become animated, and are in a capacity for exerting their influence; and those who seem to have been neglected by her, like models wrought in haste, are capable, in a great measure, of finishing what she has left imperfect.

Chevreul remarks: "Drapery of a lustreless white, such as cambric muslin, assorts well with a fresh complexion, of which it relieves the rose colour; but it is unsuitable to complexions which have a disagreeable tint, because white always exalts all colours, by raising their tone; consequently it is unsuitable to those skins which, without having this disagreeable tint, very