s, without the least art or
dexterity, not only destroys all distinction of features, but renders
the aspect really frightful, or at best conveys nothing but ideas of
disgust and aversion. You know, that without this horrible masque no
married lady is admitted at court, or in any polite assembly; and that
it is a mark of distinction which no bourgeoise dare assume. Ladies of
fashion only have the privilege of exposing themselves in these
ungracious colours. As their faces are concealed under a false
complexion, so their heads are covered with a vast load of false hair,
which is frizzled on the forehead, so as exactly to resemble the wooly
heads of the Guinea negroes. As to the natural hue of it, this is a
matter of no consequence, for powder makes every head of hair of the
same colour; and no woman appears in this country, from the moment she
rises till night, without being compleatly whitened. Powder or meal was
first used in Europe by the Poles, to conceal their scald heads; but
the present fashion of using it, as well as the modish method of
dressing the hair, must have been borrowed from the Hottentots, who
grease their wooly heads with mutton suet and then paste it over with
the powder called buchu. In like manner, the hair of our fine ladies is
frizzled into the appearance of negroes wool, and stiffened with an
abominable paste of hog's grease, tallow, and white powder. The present
fashion, therefore, of painting the face, and adorning the head,
adopted by the beau monde in France, is taken from those two polite
nations the Chickesaws of America and the Hottentots of Africa. On the
whole, when I see one of those fine creatures sailing along, in her
taudry robes of silk and gauze, frilled, and flounced, and furbelowed,
with her false locks, her false jewels, her paint, her patches, and
perfumes; I cannot help looking upon her as the vilest piece of
sophistication that art ever produced.

This hideous masque of painting, though destructive of all beauty, is,
however, favourable to natural homeliness and deformity. It accustoms
the eyes of the other sex, and in time reconciles them to frightfull
objects; it disables them from perceiving any distinction of features
between woman and woman; and, by reducing all faces to a level, gives
every female an equal chance for an admirer; being in this particular
analogous to the practice of the antient Lacedemonians, who were
obliged to chuse their helpmates in the dark. In wha