ror, the error of
not seeing that it is from the shoulders, and from the shoulders only,
that all garments should be hung.

And as regards high heels, I quite admit that some additional height to
the shoe or boot is necessary if long gowns are to be worn in the street;
but what I object to is that the height should be given to the heel only,
and not to the sole of the foot also. The modern high-heeled boot is, in
fact, merely the clog of the time of Henry VI., with the front prop left
out, and its inevitable effect is to throw the body forward, to shorten
the steps, and consequently to produce that want of grace which always
follows want of freedom.

Why should clogs be despised? Much art has been expended on clogs. They
have been made of lovely woods, and delicately inlaid with ivory, and
with mother-of-pearl. A clog might be a dream of beauty, and, if not too
high or too heavy, most comfortable also. But if there be any who do not
like clogs, let them try some adaptation of the trouser of the Turkish
lady, which is loose round the limb and tight at the ankle.

The 'Girl Graduate,' with a pathos to which I am not insensible, entreats
me not to apotheosise 'that awful, befringed, beflounced, and bekilted
divided skirt.' Well, I will acknowledge that the fringes, the flounces,
and the kilting do certainly defeat the whole object of the dress, which
is that of ease and liberty; but I regard these things as mere wicked
superfluities, tragic proofs that the divided skirt is ashamed of its own
division. The principle of the dress is good, and, though it is not by
any means perfection, it is a step towards it.

Here I leave the 'Girl Graduate,' with much regret, for Mr. Wentworth
Huyshe. Mr. Huyshe makes the old criticism that Greek dress is unsuited
to our climate, and, to me the somewhat new assertion, that the men's
dress of a hundred years ago was preferable to that of the second part of
the seventeenth century, which I consider to have been the exquisite
period of English costume.

Now, as regards the first of these two statements, I will say, to begin
with, that the warmth of apparel does not depend really on the number of
garments worn, but on the material of which they are made. One of the
chief faults of modern dress is that it is composed of far too many
articles of clothing, most of which are of the wrong substance; but over
a substratum of pure wool, such as is supplied by Dr. Jaeger under the
modern