A deformity unknown in classic times.

In proof, however, that we are sincere at least in our purpose, though thus shaped in negative forms of expression, we will give it a more positive and assuring shape, by the candid avowal of our opinion that had Phryne, when tried for her life by the Athenian Areopagitæ, even though defended by the orator Hyperides,* made to herself such a waist as that produced by the Corset of our modern fashionable fair, she would never have been acquitted. For the sight of a deformity so astounding —a reversion of the female human form so opposed to that of nature, and to that æsthetical sentiment or perception of the beautiful which had become native to the Greek mind, would indubitably have steeled the hearts of her judges against all sentiment of compassion, and despite every appeal of her eloquent counsel for mercy, they would have condemned her to death. With such a waist, reversing all the typeharmonies of form and graceful fitness of

* Contemporary with Demosthenes.

the woman's structure to fulfil the purposes Phryne of of Nature's omniscient and admirable

Praxiteles.

design,*

we make bold to assert that Praxiteles would have deemed her form

* Our example of the lady with a fan is taken from a photograph that exhibits, in a marked degree, two defects not perpetuated here; namely, a flatness in the bust and a sad want of beauty in the form of the hands, common to figures that owe their slender proportion to the skill of the corsétière, the nourishment appearing to be diverted from those parts.

Sophistical

arguments.

hideously unworthy of reproduction by his chisel, and that her statue by his masterly hand would never have graced the Temple of Delphi.

But, from a point of view more grave, were it even possible-which it is not—to disconnect the intimate accordance of the æsthetical form from its connate hygienic design throughout the whole structure of the human body, we consider the subject is one which, if thought convenient for a theme likely to be "a taking one" as "a question of the day," should at least have been treated more in regard to the real interests of society than in the specious and flippantly sophistic style defined by logicians as the Argumentum ad Ignorantiam, founded upon premises the insufficiency of which is neither likely to be detected by the majority, nor appreciated at their real worth by those who take the glitter for gold, or who think to have found in the style and tenor of the discussion a sufficiency of excuse for adherence to a

Propension of

custom in accordance with their habit, La Mode a prejudices, and the aspirations of their self- the Temperalove.

The mutative vagaries of human art in the manner, form, style, or mode of dress, called among modern civilized communities the Fashion-la Mode—may be considered from two chief points of view.

From the first, and the most usually professed aspect of regarding it, it is considered a product of the Taste; a sentiment as diverse, nevertheless, even among those who profess to have a cultivated good taste, as is the physical taste in individuals. From the second point of view, and that which, having regard to the majority of every class that affects the fashion of the day, it may be said to be less a sentiment of the mind than a propension of the temperament, restrained by no recognised limits beyond which excess or insufficiency are perceptible to them, as in dis-accord with nature, the conventional proprieties of reason, and sometimes even those of

ment.

Vanity and Ignorance in both civilized and savage states.

social decency. It is under this aspect, also, at once the most comprehensive and consistent with truth and fact, that the affinity between the measure of taste in the civilized and in the uncultured communities of the human family, is made evident in their physiological propensions, affections, and operation.

It has taken upwards of one thousand years to bring the peoples of Europe to their present condition of civilization; yet from the last standpoint adverted to, may still be estimated the little difference that in reality distinguishes the measure or standard of taste in civilized modern society, and that of the unenlightened savage.

In both a vast amount of ignorance, of inherent, indocile vanity, and propensity to artifice and deception, differing in the means, materials, and appliances only— the actuating motives in both civilized and savage being much the same, and oft-times equally grotesque and ludicrous in their exhibition.