nderful artificers from whom, I suppose, she at first proceeded--the
coral insects; for who would want cotton! No, no. Selfish preferences,
individual wishes, must merge in the general good of the human race;
and however "their own painted skins" might suffice our "sires,"
clothing, "sumptuous," as well as "for use," must decorate ourselves.

To whom, then, are the fullers, the dyers, the cleaners--to whom are
the spinners and weavers, and printers and mercers, and milliners and
haberdashers, and modistes, and silk-men and manufacturers, cotton
lords and fustian men, mantuamakers and corset professors, indebted
for that nameless grace, that exquisite finish and appropriateness,
which gives to all their productions their charm and their
utility?--To the NEEDLEWOMAN, assuredly. For though the raw materials
have been grown at Sea Island and shipped at New York,--have been
consigned to the Liverpool broker and sold to the Manchester merchant,
and turned over to the manufacturer, and spun and woven, and bleached
and printed, and placed in the custody of the warehouseman, or on the
shelf of the shopkeeper--of what good would it be that we had a
fifty-yard length of calico to shade our oppressed limbs on a
"dog-day," if we had not the means also to render that material
agreeably available? Yet not content with merely rendering it
available, this beneficent fairy, the needlewoman, casts, "as if by
the spell of enchantment, that ineffable grace over beauty which the
choice and arrangement of dress is calculated to bestow." For the love
of becoming ornament--we quote no less an authority than the historian
of the 'State of Europe in the Middle Ages,'--"is not, perhaps, to be
regarded in the light of vanity; it is rather an instinct which woman
has received from Nature to give effect to those charms which are her
defence." And if it be necessary to woman with her charms, is it not
tenfold necessary to those who--Heaven help them!--have few charms
whereof to boast? For, as Harrison says, "it is now come to passe that
men are transformed into monsters."

"Better be out of the world than out of the fashion," is a proverb
which, from the universal assent which has in all ages been given to
it, has now the force of an axiom. It was this self evident
proposition which emboldened the beau of the fourteenth century, in
spite of the prohibitions of popes and senators,--in spite of the more
touching personal inconvenience, and even risk an