noted. There are few trials more critical to a waning beauty, than the appearing in a new and brilliant fashion. If it becomes her, the whisper instantly runs round the circle, “how young she looks!”—a most invidious way of hinting she is as old as the hills;—if it does not become her, which is usually the case, then you will hear the remark, “what an odious dress!” meaning, the wearer looks as ugly as the Fates.
The contrast between a new fashion and an old familiar face instantly strikes the beholder, and makes him run over all the changes in appearance he has seen the individual assume; and then, there is danger that the antiquated fashions may be revived—and how provoking it is to be questioned whether one remembers when long waists and hoops, and ruffled-cuffs were worn!—A reference to the parish-register, or the family-record, would not disclose the age more effectually.
Nor are the youthful exempted from their share in the evils of change. It draws the attention of the beholder to the dress, rather than the wearers; and it reminds bachelors, palpably and alarmingly, of the expense of supporting a wife who must thus appear in a new costume every change of the mode.
Now, as it is fashion which makes the pleasing in dress, were one particular form retained ever so long, it would always please, and thus the unnecessary expense of time and money be avoided; and the charges of fickleness and frivolousness entirely repelled. We have facts to support this opinion.
Is not the Spanish costume quite as becoming as our own mode? and that costume has been unchanged, or nearly so, for centuries; while the French and English, from whom we borrow our fashions, (poor souls that we are, to be thus destitute of invention and taste!) have ransacked nature, and exhausted art, for comparisons and terms by which to express the new inventions they have displayed in dress.
We are aware that a certain class of political economists affect to believe that luxury is beneficial to a nation—but it is not so. The same reasoning which would make extravagance in dress commendable, because it employed manufacturers and artists, would
