of Gloucester may be seen (See Strutt, Plate XLIV.) dressed in an elegant and natural manner without corsets. When, however, they were once adopted, it was only natural, following other fashions, that they should run into extremes; and hence the waist was not only compressed and rendered unnaturally small, but rose and fell with the caprice of the times. At one time close up to the breasts, and at another down to the hips, it ascended and descended with the whim of the age; but the corset, for good or ill, always held its ground. The fardingale came in and went out, with a thousand other fashions, but the corset remains; and we doubt not but it will, when properly adapted to the body, remain as long as there are sensible ladies left in the world to wear it.
We should like, above all things, to possess a museum of old stays, beginning with the first rude effort of the savage to support the body, and passing on from the bodices of the middle ages down to those of our own time—the good, bad, and indifferent of all ages. Dr. Johnson defines stays, "bodice, a kind of stiff waistcoat, made of whalebone, worn by women;" but there were stays worn in England long before there was any whalebone to make them with, and they were consequently made, as they
