deficiencies imposed on Nature in consequence of our artificial state of living? Perfection in the human body is ideal, or rarely met with; and what the artist in dress has to do is to soften the natural excrescences, and give grace and beauty to the homely or imperfect, that they may approximate nearer to that which they ought to be. In a few rare instances this may be done without corsets, but in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred the well-adapted corset is indispensable.
It is hardly possible to say at what particular period stays or corsets were first worn. Tight Lacing is condemned by writers soon after the Conquest—indeed, in the reign of William Rufus; but it does not follow that stays were necessarily worn at that time, and an inspection of a great number of ancient paintings and illuminations induces us to believe that they were not. In Strutt's "Antiquities," Plate XXXIV., there is a beautiful sketch of Queen Matilda, A.D. 1100, who is wearing an elegant and naturally-fitting dress close to the body; and that this fashion continued for a long time may be seen from a figure given in Shaw's "Dresses of the Middle Ages"—that of Margaret, wife of St. Louis, King of France, A.D. 1234.
A glance at those figures will show at once that
