conditions of human well-being not understood, we may perhaps merit the gratitude of some who are suffering ill-health or deformity, by pointing out the true principles upon which dress should be constructed, and all the evils attendant upon badly-formed clothing avoided.
Taking, then, the perfect female figure as the groundwork of all our adaptations, our exertions are always directed to the preservation of its specific beauties; or, in the event of any deviation, to its restoration, by gentle and gradual means, to the true ideal form which nature originally stamped upon it; or at least to the attainment of as near an approximation to it as possible. Were we to relate the numerous instances in which success, little short of miraculous, has attended our efforts, we should be accused of egotism, and perhaps even of exaggeration; but we profess nothing that we cannot perform, and we most solemnly assert that we have never had a case in which our system has been fairly tried, and the use of our adaptations persevered in, without the desired end being attained in a greater or less degree. As the incarnation of all that is beautiful in woman, the Venus de Medicis is universally acknowledged the most perfect specimen of female loveliness and grace, and we
