beyond the letter of the sumptuary law. Such a scrutiny was formerly made; but it would now raise a rebellion in England, which can tolerate nothing but moral censorship on such mat

ters.

And that moral censorship is sufficiently effective to make a decided distinction between the dress of the mistress and that of her maid. The maid has always her characteristic cap or her apron, or something else to mark her; and however small that distinction may be, it is quite sufficient for every observant female eye. Even male eyes themselves can easily distin

guish it.

"It is the same with men in almost every position of life; though nominally at liberty to dress as they please, they are in reality bound by the moral law of propriety, fashion, or custom. There is no written law; and no law that can even be appealed to for condemnation of a man who transgresses; for the condemnation would be scouted at every tribunal of equity and justice; and yet the law is so imperative that every one obeys. It is the law of etiquette-the best of all laws; for it suppresses all agitation and all grievance-mongering. A man may break it if he pleases, and the police will not touch him; but the ladies will be sure to tease him, for they are the police of the fashionable world.

"It is a most mysterious thing, dress fashion; where it originates no one can tell. France is generally supposed to be the cradle of it; but it is not entirely so. Each country has its own peculiar modes. We take ideas from the French, but we never thoroughly imitate them. There is always a peculiarity about a French cut which we never adopt. The national disposition that makes us fall short of this would be difficult to analyze ; but it is akin to that of each class in society, which all have their own respective ideas of what is suitable for themselves. Each may exceed or fall short of that standard as he pleases, and none can well describe what the standard is; but there is a certain sphere of liberty in which each is permitted to roam at pleasure, restrained alone by the common sense of propriety in the order to which he belongs; and he is laughed up or down till he finds himself within, if he happens to go out of it. As with professions and trades, so is it with nations; but how the changes come is a mystery. It is only in the north-western

nations that the changes take place. In south-eastern lands there is a great tendency to fixedness; but France, Germany, and England are the great innovators in fashion amongst the Europeans-none more than England-for here the fashion pervades all but the poorest, whereas in France and Germany it is chiefly confined to the wealthier classes. It is a sign of liberty, this fashion, after all. Show us a strong electric current of fashion assimilating the dress and manners of a people without a sumptuary law, and you show us at the same time a free people, a people trained in the habit of self-criticism, cultivating the taste, and surely, if slowly, improving the habits and customs of society.

"Fashions are evidently improving, at least in the main. We may find worse and better alternately in the course of a few years, or even a century; but in the course of centuries the general improvement is still perceptible. Men have now thoroughly divested themselves of the rich and gaudy trappings of olden times. Silk, and satin, and velvet coats and breeches, are no longer in vogue; tawdry gilding and brocading are equally obsolete; ruffles and points, and buckles, and petticoat breeches decorated with ribands, are all out of date; and a man's dress is much less costly now than it was even a hundred years ago, when poor Oliver Goldsmith did not think it above the dignity of his rank in society to spend 407. upon a coat. Such folly is obsolete amongst men. Men have now abandoned the rich silks, and contented themselves with the homely black broad-cloth, without a decoration of red, blue, or yellow-or even gold buttons.

"There is a singular tendency in human nature to brand the class below us. Why should the servant-maids be branded and the mistresses not? The duchesses would brand marchionesses; the marchionesses the countesses; the countesses would brand the merchants' and tradesmen's wives, and perhaps they sometimes turn up their noses at seeing themselves surpassed. Now all this would be wrong. Why then should it not be wrong to brand the maid-servants? Leave them to the tribunal of public criticism-the common sense of their own class, which is a better guide than any rule that can be borrowed from the antique female costumes of France or Belgium. The exceptions

we suspect would be very few in number to the general rule of modesty in servants' dresses; and scarcely one in a city would be heard of who rustled up-stairs in silks and satins, even if permitted. We are therefore not disposed to indorse Mrs. Austin's opinion to the letter; for we think there is scarcely a maid-servant in England, in her senses, who would not refuse to wear a dress of the first class if presented to her, or if she could even afford to buy it. She would modestly say that she would prefer one more becoming. What each has in her power to buy, without incurring any privation of personal or domestic comfort, is for her suitable, if in good taste and calculated to set off her person to advantage; and we trust it will become less and less the fashion to impose any other distinctive garb than that which the moral sense of each class itself approves of. By these means alone can taste be cultivated and judgment exercised."

So far this writer. Certainly it ought to be a source of rejoicing to see the sense of beauty even in regard to dress extended thus to the mass of the nation. "All this world of women," says a French writer, "that we see on our public walks, one dazzling iris of a thousand colours, used formerly to be in mourning. These changes, which are thought futile, have an immense tendency. They are not merely simple material ameliorations, they indicate a progress of the people in externals towards a visible union. They attain by means of them to ideas, which they would not otherwise have, of taste, and beauty, and art, of self-respect and decorum." I envy not the man who harshly judges even those poor innocents who make sacrifices to their appearance thus. Better to look on them with sweet indulgent eyes, and be content with the reflection of Pindar: "If any in beauty shall surpass others, let them remember that they dress limbs that are mortal, and that last of all they will clothe themselves with earth :" or, as Moore translates it,—

'Forget not that their limbs are mortal mould;

That earth, man's latest garb, that boasted frame must hold *."

But perhaps in these remarks we have been led into a digression. No, no, I hear for once a clear loud voice reply. How

* Nem. xi.

VOL. I.

F

éver, we must proceed to matters that will be felt to be of more interest even at the bower. We have seen in the way of a rapid glance how fruitful are common things in relation to beauty. It is but a slight and most inefficient sketch of the subject that has been made; as Cicero says, perhaps, "ad impellendum satis, ad edocendum parum." We have heard that, in contradistinction to the way of those that sigh for things extraordinary,—

"There is a softer winding-path through life,
And man may walk it with unruffled soul,
And drink its wayside waters till his heart
Is still'd with its o'erflowing happiness.
The chart by which to traverse it is writ
In the broad book of nature. 'Tis to have
Attentive and admiring faculties;
To go abroad exulting in the joy
Of beautiful and well-created things;
To love the hue of waters, and the sheen
Of silver fountains leaping to the sea;
To thrill with the rich melody of birds,
Living their life of music; to be glad
In the gay sunshine, reverent in the storm;
To see a beauty in the stirring leaf,

And find calm thoughts beneath the whispering tree;

To see, and hear, and breathe the evidence
Of God's deep wisdom in the natural world!
It is to linger on 'the magic face

Of human beauty,' and from light and shade
Alike to draw a lesson; 'tis to know
The cadences of voices that are tuned
By majesty and purity of thought;
To gaze on woman's beauty as a star
Whose purity and distance make it fair;
And from the spell of music to awake,
And feel that it has purified the heart!
It is to love all beauty, like the light

Dear to the soul as sunshine to the eye *."

We must now go on to consider common or daily things in

* Willis.

relation to virtue, a theme in close connexion with our last; for

"The good is always beautiful,

The beautiful is good."

CHAPTER III.

THOUGH at the Lover's Seat we are not going to interfere with any doctor, or propose knowingly a wandering upon the ground of any grave instructor, whose irritable temperament might be excited at any show of pretension or intermeddling on the part of such insignificant persons as ourselves; yet I can easily conceive that at this point our little inquiry, if it could reach the ears of certain over-jealous critics, might be regarded with some suspicion, at least, if not offence: but as when lately considering common things in relation to beauty we said nothing derogatory of nature's extraordinary productions, or of the singular treasures resulting from human art—so now, in proceeding to reflect on them in relation to virtue, we must begin by declaring that we are guiltless of desiring to depreciate those high transcendental things that by a mysterious and inviolable law are connected with what is most ordinary-things which have been recommended to us all from our childhood, the very names of which in fact are household words in every part of Christendom, and which, no doubt, are the indispensable sources not only of all true common virtues, as they are undoubtedly of all happiness that will endure, but also of that very universality of mind which can consciously and philosophically appreciate the excellence of common things. We are here, as it were, shut in from the world's curious scrutiny, and, with only the birds to listen to us, engaged in hearing read, without any sinister view of interpretation, extracts from books that seem chiefly addressed to such uncritical and common persons as ourselves. We might therefore proceed without any apology, and dismiss all deprecacatory forms, but that there is a thought of our own which seems to have made it necessary to say thus much, if not to pro