also make intemperance a virtue in those who could afford to be drunk, because the preparation of the alcohol employs labourers, and the consumption would encourage trade. All these views of the expediency of tolerating evil are a part of that Machiavellian system of selfishness which has been imposed on the world for wisdom, but which has proved its origin by the corrupting crimes and miseries men have endured in consequence of yielding themselves dupes or slaves of fashion and vice.
We do hope, indeed believe, that a more just appreciation of the true interests and real happiness of mankind will yet prevail. The improvements, now so rapidly progressing, in the intellectual and civil condition of nations must, we think, be followed by a corresponding improvement in the tastes and pursuits of those who are the élite of society. Etiquette and the fashions cannot be the engrossing objects of pursuit, if people become reasonable. The excellencies of mind and heart will be of more consequence to a lady than the colour of a riband or the shape of a bonnet. We would not have ladies despise or neglect dress. They should be always fit to be seen; personal neatness is indispensable to agreeableness—almost to virtue. A proper portion of time and attention must scrupulously be given to external appearance, but not the whole of our days and energies. Is it worthy of Christians, pretending to revere the precepts of Him who commanded them not to “take thought what they should put on,” to spend their best years in studying the form of their apparel? Trifles should not thus engross us, and they need not, if our citizens would only shake off this tyranny of fashion, imposed by the tailors of Paris and London, and establish a national costume, which would, wherever an American appeared, announce him as a republican, and the countryman of Washington. The men would probably do this, if our ladies would first show that they have sufficient sense and taste to invent and arrange their own costume (without the inspiration of foreign milliners) in accordance with those national principles of comfort, propriety, economy, and becomingness, which are the only true foundation of the elegant in apparel.
It is not necessary to elegance of appearance, nor to the pros-
