ch prevail. The result is a painful incongruity. Who would
dream of placing a Grecian portico to an Elizabethan building? Why
then endeavour to combine old fashions with new? Why attempt to wear a
bonnet of almost primitive form with dresses of modern dimensions and
style? or why wear flounces when they are out of fashion, and full
skirts when everything is _"gored"_ into plainness? It is necessary to
pay some attention to the present style of dress, if ladies desire to
avoid peculiarities and wish to please. But it, of course, requires a
certain sense of propriety and of fitness. A bonnet of diminutive
form which suits to perfection a young girl with a small oval face
and slender throat, is quite misapplied when adopted by a woman of
a certain age, whose figure has escaped beyond the limits of even
"embonpoint," whose throat is not perceptible, and whose face and head
are large. She requires something of more ample dimensions, that
bears some affinity in size with the head and face it is intended
to ornament; something which will modify, if not conceal, the
imperfections which time has developed. A dress of a light and airy
kind does not become a matron; nor can that which suits a slight
and elastic figure be worn with impunity by what is called a "comely
dame."

Fashion prescribes all sorts of rules about breadths, gores, flounces,
and such like, and these are the hints which she gives, and which
ladies must take and apply to themselves to the best advantage. There
is ample margin allowed for each one to adopt what is best suited to
her own particular style of beauty. Perhaps there never was a time
when so much liberty was allowed to ladies to dress according to their
own fancy. Of course we mean within certain limits. If any one will
consent to keep within those limits, and not do actual violence to the
decrees of fashion, she may, to a considerable degree, follow her own
fancy. If the general idea which fashion has submitted to society as
the sine qua non of being well dressed is borne in mind, she is very
tolerant of the various modifications which ladies, for the most part,
wisely adopt, that they may not make "guys" of themselves. Nothing
illustrates this more than the hats and bonnets which are worn. Their
variety is so great that their names might be termed "legion;" and a
pretty woman may adopt all kinds of conceits, providing she neither
offends the eye nor defies the prevailing fashion. One may come out as