ral form
still remains; it is still the same general dress which is comparatively
fixed, though on a very slender foundation, but it is on this which
fashion must rest. He who invents with the most success, or dresses in,
the best taste, would probably, from the same sagacity employed to
greater purposes, have discovered equal skill, or have formed the same
correct taste in the highest labours of art.

I have mentioned taste in dress, which is certainly one of the lowest
subjects to which this word is applied; yet, as I have before observed,
there is a right even here, however narrow its foundation respecting the
fashion of any particular nation. But we have still more slender means
of determining, in regard to the different customs of different ages or
countries, to which to give the preference, since they seem to be all
equally removed from nature.

If an European, when he has cut off his beard, and put false hair on his
head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard knots, as unlike
nature as he can possibly make it; and having rendered them immovable by
the help of the fat of hogs, has covered the whole with flour, laid on by
a machine with the utmost regularity; if, when thus attired he issues
forth, he meets a Cherokee Indian, who has bestowed as much time at his
toilet, and laid on with equal care and attention his yellow and red
ochre on particular parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most
becoming; whoever despises the other for this attention to the fashion of
his country, whichever of these two first feels himself provoked to
laugh, is the barbarian.

All these fashions are very innocent, neither worth disquisition, nor any
endeavour to alter them, as the change would, in all probability, be
equally distant from nature. The only circumstances against which
indignation may reasonably be moved, are where the operation is painful
or destructive of health, such as is practised at Otahaiti, and the
straight lacing of the English ladies; of the last of which, how
destructive it must be to health and long life, the professor of anatomy
took an opportunity of proving a few days since in this Academy.

It is in dress as in things of greater consequence. Fashions originate
from those only who have the high and powerful advantages of rank, birth,
and fortune; as many of the ornaments of art, those at least for which no
reason can be given, are transmitted to us, are adopted, and acquire
their co