on at its most extreme point in the fashionable dress of
Spain in the seventeenth century, such as it has been immortalized by
Velasquez. In England hoops died out during the reign of George III but
were revived for a time, half a century later, in the Victorian
crinoline.[147]

Only second to the pelvis and its integuments as a secondary sexual
character in woman we must place the breasts.[148] Among barbarous and
civilized peoples the beauty of the breast is usually highly esteemed.
Among Europeans, indeed, the importance of this region is so highly
esteemed that the general rule against the exposure of the body is in its
favor abrogated, and the breasts are the only portion of the body, in the
narrow sense, which a European lady in full dress is allowed more or less
to uncover. Moreover, at various periods and notably in the eighteenth
century, women naturally deficient in this respect have sometimes worn
artificial busts made of wax. Savages, also, sometimes show admiration for
this part of the body, and in the Papuan folk-tales, for instance, the
sole distinguishing mark of a beautiful woman is breasts that stand
up.[149] On the other hand, various savage peoples even appear to regard
the development of the breasts as ugly and adopt devices for flattening
this part of the body.[150] The feeling that prompts this practice is not
unknown in modern Europe, for the Bulgarians are said to regard developed
breasts as ugly; in mediaeval Europe, indeed, the general ideal of feminine
slenderness was opposed to developed breasts, and the garments tended to
compress them. But in a very high degree of civilization this feeling is
unknown, as, indeed, it is unknown to most barbarians, and the beauty of a
woman's breasts, and of any natural or artificial object which suggests
the gracious curves of the bosom, is a universal source of pleasure.

The casual vision of a girl's breasts may, in the chastest youth,
evoke a strange perturbation. (Cf., e.g., a passage in an early
chapter of Marcelle Tinayre's _La Maison du Peche_.) We need not
regard this feeling as of purely sexual origin; and in addition
even to the aesthetic element it is probably founded to some
extent on a reminiscence of the earliest associations of life.
This element of early association was very well set forth long
ago by Erasmus Darwin:--

"When the babe, soon after it is born into this cold world, is
applied to its mot