orset beneath; but it need not pinch or squeeze the least in
the world; let it fit close; that is enough. It is no doubt uncommonly
convenient for a lusty alderman's wife of forty to reduce herself to the
proportions of "fair seventeen;" but she ought to be able to reduce the
whole frame in the same ratio; otherwise to pull in at the waist till the
idea of suffocation is painfully evident to the most careless beholder,
and yet to leave the bust with the symmetry of Minerva Victrix, is a gross
and palpable absurdity. Far from being the [Greek: to chalon], this is the
[Greek: to chachon] of all female decoration.

And, if the waist should not be metamorphosed into unnatural smallness, so
the sleeves should not be puffed out into preternatural enlargement. Those
abominable gigot-sleeves, so well named from our old familiar
family-joint--they were utter abominations; and those bishop's
sleeves--they were foolish caricatures. Ladies are doing much better now:
either, in the evening, they trust to nature herself to set off their arms
as she pleases, or else, in the morning, they envelope them in a covering
that hardly destroys the beauty of their form. This is as it should be:
one of the principal characteristics of female grace consists, as any
sculptor can tell you, in the narrowness of the shoulders--just as of male
dignity, in their breadth. What, then, could ever have made ladies suppose
that they were ornamenting themselves by extending the upper portions of
their sleeves until they measured full three feet in a direct transversal
line? We are now witnesses of better ideas; the neck, the shoulders, and
the arms are allowed to make a continuous series of curves. The corsage is
simple in its form, and the only attempt at enrichment is the pendant
border of lace, or other material, that gives due relief, without
destroying the harmony of the outline.

As for form, then, we congratulate the ladies on having attained and
preserved so much excellence in their habiliments. We have only to
recommend, that they do not rashly try to innovate upon what they now
delight in; or rather, if new ideas are to be introduced, that they
control them by a perpetual reference to the form and framework of nature,
as their best, indeed their only, guide to what is true and beautiful.
Thanks to the manufacturing skill of European nations in general, and of
our own more particularly, there is no lack of material for women to
choose their dresses