ght;
and demi-toilettes and full-dress toilettes have each their own
peculiarities, it really becomes a very serious item of expenditure
for such ladies as make it the business of their lives to follow the
fashions of the day.

Fashion prescribes rules for all. All classes of society bow, more or
less, to her decrees. The fine lady who frequents the Court, as well
as the servant-girl who sweeps out the area of a London lodging-house,
and all the intermediate classes, are guided by Fashion. Crinolines
and bonnets prove this, as well as the length of the skirts which
are suffered to trail along in all the dirt and dust of pavement and
crossings. It always takes some time before a fashion which has been
adopted by the higher orders prevails among the lower; but, if it is a
fashion which survives beyond the moment, it invariably finds its way
downward in the course of time. Fashion prescribes the size and shape
of bonnets, the make of gowns, their length and their size--the number
of breadths and gores--the trimmings, the petticoats, which have
become like a second gown, and all the other paraphernalia of a
lady's toilette. There is no part of a lady's dress too minute for her
inspection and care and legislation. The colour of gloves, the dye of
hair, the application of false hair, the make of boots and shoes, the
choice of ornaments, are all ordered and arranged. Fashion is a sort
of "act of uniformity," which would bring all flights of fancy within
certain prescribed limits. It defines the boundaries within which
ladies may safely indulge their own conceits.

The best-dressed persons are not always those who are led blindfold by
the prevailing fashion, nor by any means those who are strong-minded
enough to defy it, and set it at nought. Any one who defies the
fashion of the day, and, when long skirts and small saucer-like
bonnets prevail, dares to walk abroad with very short petticoats,
which she holds up unnecessarily high; displaying a foot and ankle
that had better be hidden out of sight; who spurns a crinoline, and
therefore looks like a whipping post; who wears a many-coloured shawl
because cloaks and mantles are the rage; who adorns her head with
a bonnet that is of the coal-scuttle cut, over which she fastens a
large, coloured gauze veil, because she desires to protest, as far
as she can, against the innovations of fashion; such a one will never
attract, nor influence the public mind. She will provoke a smile, bu