cial epochs produce
corrupt styles of architecture and corrupt styles of drawing and
painting, as might easily be illustrated by the history of art. When
the leaders of society have blunted their finer perceptions by
dissipation and immorality, they are incapable of feeling the beauties
which come from delicate concords and truly artistic combinations.
They verge towards barbarism, and require things that are strange,
odd, dazzling, and peculiar to captivate their jaded senses. Such we
take to be the condition of Parisian society now. The tone of it is
given by women who are essentially impudent and vulgar, who override
and overrule, by the mere brute force of opulence and luxury, women of
finer natures and moral tone. The court of France is a court of
adventurers, of parvenus; and the palaces, the toilets, the equipage,
the entertainments, of the mistresses outshine those of the lawful
wives. Hence comes a style of dress which is in itself vulgar,
ostentatious, pretentious, without simplicity, without unity, seeking
to dazzle by strange combinations and daring contrasts.

"Now, when the fashions emanating from such a state of society come to
our country, where it has been too much the habit to put on and wear,
without dispute and without inquiry, any or every thing that France
sends, the results produced are often things to make one wonder. A
respectable man, sitting quietly in church or other public assembly,
may be pardoned sometimes for indulging a silent sense of the
ridiculous in the contemplation of the forest of bonnets which
surround him, as he humbly asks himself the question, Were these meant
to cover the head, to defend it, or to ornament it? and, if they are
intended for any of these purposes, how?

"I confess, to me nothing is so surprising as the sort of things which
well-bred women serenely wear on their heads with the idea that they
are ornaments. On my right hand sits a good-looking girl with a thing
on her head which seems to consist mostly of bunches of grass, straws,
with a confusion of lace, in which sits a draggled bird, looking as if
the cat had had him before the lady. In front of her sits another, who
has a glittering confusion of beads swinging hither and thither from a
jaunty little structure of black and red velvet. An anxious-looking
matron appears under the high eaves of a bonnet with a gigantic
crimson rose crushed down into a mass of tangled hair. She is
_ornamented_! she has no doubt