well-selected choice of ornaments which gives addition to beauty. Give gauze, flowers, and ribands, to young girls, and they will be more decked than the greater part of our ladies, with all the diamonds with which they load themselves, and adorn the richest stuffs. All this is the vanity of rank, and not of person. If women understood well their interests and our's, they would place no account on a misplaced richness, which defeats the effect of their charms, and the pleasure we have in finding them handsome.

What causes so high a value to be set upon these trifles, in the opinion of women, is the violent desire they have of attracting the eyes of the multitude. When once this fanaticism has entered the head, it excludes every other thought: they then love shew and pomp, and only live to be looked

at.

Do you think it is to take exercise that our pretty women go in crowds to the public rides and walks? Assuredly not. Lock

ed one in another in a rank of carriages, they have no other movement but that of smiling in return to bows. It is only, perhaps, to be noticed, and become to our eyes as an agreeable flower-garden enamelled with the brightest colours. If you doubt it, see the retreat they condemn themselves to, whose head-dresses have not been put in a state to appear in: the serenest sky

cannot draw them to an auction.

It may be said, that the pleasure which holds the pre-eminence among women is that of shewing themselves, and being thought handsome, It is this which leads them from one circle to another; and, as they fear one uniform and constant appearance in the same ornaments would soon cease to have the effect they desire, they have recourse, from time to time, to changes, which draw upon them fresh attention,

Behold the principle of those fashions to which we suffer ourselves to be drawn.

It is a stratagem of the sex to renew the same person, and reproduce it, with advantage, under various forms

It is to equal our instability that the minds of women, always employed with the means of pleasing, invent every day new attire.

The picture of ornaments changes with the wind, and the courier of fashions often comes too late. Among so many different caprices, it is difficult for women always happily to agree. Sometimes they offer us grotesque kinds, better calculated to disfigure than to ornament.

It is, for example, with regret we see the gracefulness of their persons buried in an enormous hoop, which bears no proportion to their height. They have been told, a thousand times, that white takes away all movement from their faces, and that red, alone, causes that clearness of complexion, which so much charms us, to disappear. The women obstinately persist in not believing us. Like to that ignorant possessor of an excellent statue, who caused it to be gilt,

they paint their faces red, like the antient priestesses of Bacchus and imagine, that, in thus lighting up their faces, their eyes become more sparkling.

This custom, worthy of the most savage nations, transforms the loveliest faces into painted pagodas.

I pray the ladies to forgive me this censure against the abuse of the toilette. But can we see, without chagrin, that the pains they take renders them less handsome? We cannot help urging them to their real advantage.

In all times, men, more zealous than themselves for the preservation of their beauty, have opposed those ridiculous fashions which have robbed them of it. In spite of their complaints, the head-dress, which has so great an influence on the features, has undergone the most wonderful - revolutions: we have seen the face lower than it by two feet; called then, very improperly, commode. The head-dress afterwards received that in breadth which it had

before in height; and absorbed, as we may say, the face. The arms, surmounted by ridiculous epaulettes, found themselves lost in enormous sleeves of fur. Our mothers made themselves vulgar farthingales of checkered stuffs, and an infinite number of furbelows; and in the present day, their daughters, not to degenerate, are not contented with disguising their stature by a mock girdle, giving them the appearance of being with child, which was worn by almost every boarding-school Miss turned of thirteen. They will also mask the complexion and graces of the face with a disgraceful plaster.

This latter article is too important to smile at. We have hardly been able, without murmuring, to see the women load themselves with an uncouth assortment of finery; as immoderate ruffs, scarfs, &c.

That can only be charged as a slight reproach of frivolity, which does not make them lose their credit with us; but that which directly attacks their persons, as paint, and