bull" Och! I wish you could see now "what a brave sun we have in Drogheda." When I hear a London cit praise a day as fine which would be condemned with us as gloomy, I feel there is no blunder in the conception of a local sun, and am ready to exclaim to this beclouded race, "Ah, I wish you could see what a brave "sun we have in Boston;"-I yearn to be again basking in its beams: methinks if I could once again inhale the mild breeze of our early autumn, under the vivifying expanse of a clear blue sky, I should lapse from my faith, and " pay my worship to the gairish sun.' Nothing is more difficult, and no one less qualified than myself to give you an account of the fashions; but no task is so hard, which I would not attempt to please my sister: Were I qualified, the ever varying whims and caprice of this inconstant goddess would prevent a cor rect detail. I often think of Pope's direction to portray the volatile fair : "Take a firm cloud, and in it Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of the minute." Should I accurately describe a bonnet, ere this could reach you, and Mrs. Crufts make it, its place here would probably be usurped by a hat, and your fashionable bonnet consigned to the servant-maid. The English should not, however, be rashly charged with volatility in their frequent changes of the mode. The change of fashion, which with us is a whim, here is a principle thousands get their bread by making ornamental dresses, and thousands would starve if they waited (as in the days of our grandmama) until the substantial brocade, the durable damask, or firm watered tabbies, whose fashion was as durable as their textures, were decayed. Even the august and venerable parliament, to revive decaying manufactories and give bread to their artificers, have condescended to intermeddle with the fashions, and protruded their legislative power into the regions of taste.. Buttons of a certain construction have been prohibited, under a penalty, and shoe-tyes interdicted by statute. You remember Pope's dying beauty: "Odious, in woollen, 'twould a saint provoke," Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke. "No! let a charming chintz and Brussels' lace "Enfold these limbs and shade this lifeless face: "One need not, sure, be ugly though one's dead; "And, Betty-give these cheeks a little red." The lady alludes to the law for burying the dead in flannel. The rich, however, since that day, seem influenced by the same dreadful apprehensions of lethal deformity, and contrive to evade this homely shroud by sometimes lining the coffin, or stuffing a silken pillow for the corpse, with the statute quantity of flannel. The English are not so much indebted to the French as formerly, for their fashions. Some years since, the milliners and mantua-makers received, regularly, dressed dolls from Paris-if they do now, it is not openly avowed. Indeed, the epithet dressed would not at present apply to the fashionable dames du Paris; they would, perhaps, be better represented by undressed dolls. You recollect the account which Addison gives, in his playful manner, in the Spectator, of a romping club; how they demolished a prude over-night, and sent a coach the next morning to carry off the spoils. Whether such a character as a prude exists now, in the world of London fashion, I cannot say I ought to observe, to the honour of the English fair, that I have met with no lady who appeared, in the least degree, to possess the austere qualities of that forbidding character: but if a fashionable prude should be now found and demolished, not only her spoils but the attire of the whole club might be carried in an old-fashioned tentstitched pocket-book. - So far as I can dive into this mysterious science, the actresses, the kept mistresses, and certain dashing belles in high life, sport the present fashions-except on certain occasions. When it becomes necessary to revive a decayed mode, for the benefit of the manufacturers, the bucklemaker, or other machinist to some one of the royal family, presents his or her royal highness with the old fashion, newvamped, and its display at a birth-night ball, seldom fails to give it currency. When a fashion takes, it is adopted by the families of the nobility and gentry, and from them passes, in regular gradation, to the lower classes, and from them to the colonies and the United States, while those who are first in the fashion carry it to an extreme, to maintain a proud distinction. The object of the The object of the English elegantes, indeed, seems not to be to adorn themselves becomingly, but to avoid as much as possible, looking like beauties of meaner rank, or inferior wealth. The |