finding their inspirations more and more in the living men and women of their own time. Women are every day making more history for men to paint. Let them dress so as to be paintable. Dress how they will, they are always admired, and reverenced, and loved. But I cannot say the same of their dress. The time has been when, in order to paint a woman, the first necessity for the artist was to get possession of her great-grandmother's gown. Under such circumstances the painting of contemporary life must be limited to portraiture; and everything that limits the range of art, limits its splendour and the hold it should have on our affections.
There are only a few words that I care to add.
I think we lose something as a nation in not having a distinctive dress for our peasantry and the bourgeoises of our provincial towns—nothing, I mean, to correspond with the square of linen folded on the head, of which the Roman woman is so justly proud, or the white caps of Normandy and Holland, varying in shape according to the township. The picturesque way in which the shawl is used by our Lancashire lasses is, indeed, some approach to it. But I recognise the impossibility of the Continental system being established amongst us.
Would it, however, be too much to hope that the ladies of England may see fit to adopt the beautiful custom of wearing a special garment for church services? It would be in itself so seemly; it would add so much to the grace and dignity of our worship; it would be so agreeable a contrast to the parterre of bonnets in the lecture-room, and the pretty grouping of black and brown and golden hair—yes, and of silver, too—in the opera-house, that I believe the suggestion has only to be fairly considered to be accepted.
I ask, "Will the ladies see fit to do this?" because, after all, it is a woman's question. Men have a right to be considered, but a woman's dress, to be beautiful, must be the expression of a woman's mind, and the work of a woman's hand.—I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
Mr. John Absolon, R.I.
Dear Sir,—All padding, unless to hide a positive deformity, is a mistake. Fashion must be constantly changing, or how would dressmakers live? I remember taking my wife to a friend's in the country. Next morning the young ladies were invisible, but appeared in the afternoon without crinolines. I never submitted to that abomination, and my wife, to please me, never put one on. The young ladies thought Mrs. Absolon brought the last London change!—Truly yours,
Lastly, let us hear the opinion of a lady artist. Madame Starr Canziani—for years one of the best known lady exhibitors at the Royal Academy, to whom we owe the following designs—writes as follows:-
Madame Starr Canziani.
Design for a tennis dress.
Sir, I have been asked to give my opinion of modern dress, its merits and demerits, from an artist's point of view. It seems to me that while much at the present time is picturesque and quaint in the extreme, the highest laws of beauty demand fitness as well, and while we have no fixed principles to guide our fashions, however beautiful and sensible they may happen to be at any given moment, there must always
