I

T has often been said that the style is the man; we might also venture to add that the dress is the woman and, in many lamentable instances, that the woman is the dress and nothing more. Without entering upon any intricate discussion about the expediencies, proprieties or improprieties of fashion, or prophesying that better future, when every one shall be a fashion to himself, we would venture a few remarks on the prevailing mode of dressing, and its moral effects on the rising generation.

It were hard to determine what is absolutely beautiful and absolutely ugly; the significance of these terms being altogether relative; but it were well to study when a thing is ugly and when it is beautiful, and apply the rule to our style of dress.

Accidents in nature are very often beauties. A deformed weather-beaten tree in an otherwise pleasing landscape may prove a necessary discord in its harmony, and hence pass for a beauty; but discords and concords have their established laws, their raison d'être, and as the world is supposed to travel towards an æsthetic as well as moral excellence, we would fain maintain that dress, considered in the light of art, becomes a vital question the moment it affects the education of taste.

Our own moral rectitude and innate sense of the beautiful, in a great measure, regulate our taste; yet in new countries where art is still in its infancy, and the public mind still unschooled in that direction, the eye takes in all forms and shapes with but little discrimination; and the extravagance of dress, the Bohemian taste of a certain class of women whose very irregularities of life have often dictated a fashion, are thus intro

duced into otherwise pure-minded communities; and, like the sensation novel, prove as subtle a poison in corrupting their sense of the beautiful, as the former their minds and hearts.

Our fashions, with a few exceptions, come from France. Every country has its speciality. The natural good taste of the French, their tact, their quick sense of appropriateness have given their styles the grace, the fitness and the usefulness society admires in them. Germany, with all its profundity, and with all its solidity and honesty of character, could not turn out a graceful hat—such a moral, philosophical, scientific, literary hat for example, as used to be found at the Paris Emporium of "Vital, successeur de Finot, fabricant de chapeaux." This illustrious hatter, by giving certain inflections to certain lines, formed from the same model an infinity of variations, which became, as occasion required, physicians', grocers', dandies', artists', fat men's, lean men's hats. He once followed up a man's political career in the modifications he made in his hat, and when the former had reached the desired position, he presented him with a hat, in every way expressive of the juste-milieu of his sentiments.

The Berlin costume "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null," is "dead perfection, nothing more"; it lacks the life, the (to use a very pedantic word, and seemingly out of place here) spontaneousness which characterizes all French workmanship from the simplest to the most elaborate. Berlin may claim the goddess--the Venus perfection of every limb-but France is in possession of the girdle, and it is by the puissance of this girdle that she rules the will

of the civilized world, in respect to dress. Long may she! For, despite the extravagance of her fashion-plates, and the absurdity of the model hats she sends to the American milliners, common sense and reason, have ever been the basis of her own home-fashions. She provides graciously for all conditions of life, and so practical are the laws she lays down for her light-headed children, so adapted her patterns to their various wants, that all instinctively submit to that higher wisdom, glad to be saved the trouble of studying colour and form, and fully convinced that they could never invent a more suitable garment than the one she has always in readiness for every demand and every occasion. The main point lies in the proper discipline of all these shapes and folds, their right employment. We need hyperbole even in dress, witness the accusation brought against the renowned actress, Mademoiselle Favart, whose correct taste prevents her from finding the key-note to her stage attire her costume, simplex munditiis, lacks character. The thing needed then adaptation. A most difficult thing, however, it will prove, to show how to adapt to a reasonable head that semblance of a hat, that meaningless little nut-shell outrageously decked with bunches of ribbons, flowers, feathers, which gives at present to our wives and daughters so alarming a look of insanity. What are its claims ?-lightness, airiness? A great mass of hair is required to give it a basis, and the load of it on the head lies anything but lightly. The times have changed since fair Belinda's two precious locks were clipped; men are not so susceptible to capillary attraction as they once were, and it takes more than “a single hair" now-a-days, to ensnare "man's imperial race."

An obvious purpose of a hat or bonnet is a protection to the head; and, in addition to this strictly physical purpose, a moral purpose is superadded—that seemly covering enjoined upon women by the Apostle Paul.

It would lead us quite astray from our present purpose, to trace the mazy labyrinths of influences (if indeed that were possible) that resulted in the negation of hats and bonnets which characterizes the present mode. In looking back a number of years, we see it come in, hand in hand, as it were, with the grand idea of the emancipation of women, and it is certainly a matter to be regretted that so noble an idea should present itself so ridiculously symbolized. In searching, however, with a little good will, we might even here find a redeeming feature in the case, namely, that all through history, great purposes have often borrowed the fool's cap and bells, to conceal their mighty interests. Brutus, planning the Tarquins' overthrow, plays the fool; Hamlet, to probe the soul of his murderous uncle-father, puts on the garb of insanity; the whole French nation, breaking the shell of tyranny, hides its conceptions of freedom under a red cap! What woman may have in store for us in the way of reasonableness, gentle forbearance, true companionship, wise homemanagement, under the curious little hat that so deceives us now, who knows!

But let us endeavour to find an application for the existing styles. We shall always have among us the "lilies of the field," that neither spin nor toil, and yet are arrayed in more glory than Solomon; those fair ones, merely "born to bloom and drop ;" let us kindly assign them the place the odorless, but bright, dahlia and the showy tulip hold in our gardens. We need, indeed, offsets to that fearful activity that whirls us along we know not whither; and who would dare to say which is the wiser, the lily's "maiden meditation fancy free," or the distracting steam engine?

Thus may we find use for the elaborate costumes the Moniteur de la Mode sends us fresh from Paris; and very pretty indeed are some of them for our belles to stand in, or sit in, or dream in! For example, one tasty toilet, intended for a home costume, is

given as composed of a rich violet silk underskirt, scalloped at the bottom. A gray poplin upperskirt, flounced with the same violet silk as the underskirt, is brought apronlike around the sides which are held up by two heavy bows of violet silk; the rest, like the "hideous tail" of Spenser's Error is allowed to trail, "stretched forth at length without entraile." The sleeves, pagoda shape, are trimmed with violet silk, and flounced underneath with lace, to form an undersleeve, the waist, trimmed like the sleeves with violet silk, encircled by a violet velvet belt, forming heavy loops behind; a single square collar, and a neat little lace cap complete this home costume. Another, intended for the opera, is most ingeniously complicated, and we congratulate the seamstress and mantua-maker if they get paid for their work. An underskirt of black-satin is trimmed with trellis-work of gold-brown velvet folds, (the colour and material of the upperskirt) through which run a multitude of large and small grape-leaves, evidently meant to illustrate a grapery. The upper dress of rich goldbrown velvet is in its turn adorned in the same manner as the underdress, viz., with a trellis and grape-leaf work of black satin; the front forms two large points heavily fringed, and is caught up at the sides to form heavy puffs behind-the rest trails on the floor, If the fair one thus attired were to go to hear an opera of Offenbach, music and toilet would be well matched. We cannot help noticing also, the very simple travelling costume the Moniteur presents us with a dress of maroon cashmere, trimmed at the bottom with two wide flounces; these headed by a wide plaited trimming, edged on both sides by rufflings, the whole so designed as to form a labyrinth of conchs where the rufflings seem to chase each other in and out. The upperskirt is trimmed in the same way: short in front, and forming heavy puffs behind. The waist cut waist-coat shape has a postillion in the rear. A white cloth sack richly braided and

trimmed with black velvet, ending in a black and white broom fringe, completes the suit. We hope these ruffled conchs will escape the almost inevitable catches of trunks and carpet-bags, and that the cinders and the soot from the locomotive will spare the white cloth sack, and that that long broom fringe may not get entangled at some unfortunate moment in the buttons of coats and overcoats, during the very close relations into which they are bought in travelling.

We do not mean to be cynical, we only appeal to the common sense of the public in general, as to the reliance that can be placed on fashion plates. We have ourselves had occasion to compare the reality of things with these-we can hardly call them idealities without insulting the ideal— with these caricatures, and rejoiced at the generally prevailing good sense of the Parisian dress-public. In the ball-room we see the vapoury gauze, tarlatan, tulle, fashioned for dancing purposes; at the opera gorgeous materials worked into elegant simplicity; at the dinner party, velvets and silks, majestically draped, and made to show their capabilities in sweeping the drawing-room, and reclining on the sofas; in the street, the neat unpretending walking costume escaping all notice by its modest cut and sober colours; at home, the easy morning dress, and quiet evening toilet; in the school-room a quaker plainness: no signs of the existing follies, all is simple and suited to the occasion. The seamstress going to her daily work would not dream, passing by the shop windows, and gazing at its allurements, of imitating the costumes on exhibition; the chambermaid has her own neat attire, suitable for her service, and would no more crave an India shawl, than she would the rain-bow; the cook would scorn encumbering herself with puffs and bustles and hoops amidst her pots and kettles; the toilet of the French bonne has almost become proverbial for its modest simplicity. But, across the

seas, and out of the pale of this direct and sensible influence, the fashion-plate becomes the oracle, and painful, both to the eye and heart, are the sights its votaries make of themselves.

Extravagance in fashions has existed in all times, and it is left to the wise to make a wise selection; but whether the wise have decreased in number in proportion as folly increased, or that the appreciation of form and symmetry and proportion and harmony has degenerated, it is certain that society male and female-has fallen very generally a victim to the prevailing passion for dress. That the young and thoughtless, the lightheaded and light-hearted should devote a portion of their existence to these irresistible exigencies might be expected, but that the sober-minded women, good wives and good mothers, should spend their better thoughts and precious time upon such elegant nonsense as we have mentioned, and that in their infatuation they should, for the mere gratification of maternal vanity, sow in their children's minds the seeds of frivolity, is truly lamentable. This evil is not confined to metropolitan towns-the larger cities can oppose culture to the invading enemy but in the villages, among country people, this increasing love of dress saps their best energies, and the good old virtues of our mothers, industry, modesty, simplicity, are superseded by what is commonly termed progress-frivolity and idleness cloaked under education-if an arm-full of big books, and a saucy face challenging public opinion from under its independent little hat, can be dignified with such a name.

taste and common sense, and are taught to consider dress the all in all of life?

Between the quaker no'style, and the last fashion's too-much-style, there is surely a golden mean which a discriminating eye can not fail to detect; far from advocating abso lute indifference in regard to becoming dressing, we should on the contrary wish to direct the young in the course of study that would open their minds to an appreciation of what is truly beautiful. So long as we must be clothed in some way or other, let us accord to dress all the importance it deserves. Why should it not through simplicity be made to approach somewhat the dignity of a fine art? Let the press take the matter in hand, let a few sturdy pens challenge the exaggerations of the too-fashionable, and convince mothers that their little ones look best and sweetest in plain attire; that their daughters' taste may, by a wholesome dress-regimen, be so directed as to acquire a vigorous health, which will make them scorn all these gingerbready, sugarplumy means of producing effects, and resort to a more robust mode of enhancing their charms, by giving them their true character through an artistic correctness of forms, materials and colours.

We boast of constant advance, why should not the modes of dressing be susceptible of progress, instead of ever revolving, as they do, within a circle of rampant monstrosities?

sight, hath bred," and "purge, with euphrasy and rue, the visual nerve," and thus enable us to discern the beauty which nature offers as a pattern for our vestures.