534 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and those of others to frank analysis. She came to the conclusion 

 that the sentiment of physical modesty was one arising from a 

 sense of one's own imperfection ; that if one could be quite con- 

 scious of perfect proportion and beauty, there would cease to be 

 any motive or impulse to conceal the body and limbs. Perhaps 

 it is as well that misgivings on this point are pretty universal ; 

 but, seeing that it is fixed by an utterly arbitrary rule what por- 

 tions of the body may be displayed and what may be concealed, 

 it may be permitted to enter a protest against the tyranny which 

 forbids one young lady to show her ankles because another one 

 finds it expedient to conceal hers. 



One longs for redemption from the barbarities of feminine 

 fashions. One sighs to exchange the long, wasp-like waists and 

 tight-lacing for the simple, easy gowns of our grandmothers, to 

 replace the girdle where the Grecian zone was bound, just clear 

 of the ribs. But one has an uneasy foreboding that the sim- 

 plicity of classical toilets might be interfered with by the dia- 

 bolical devices of milliners. At the close of last century, before 

 small waists came, in the inscrutable movement of the female 

 mind, to be counted a beauty, there was an atrocious fashion of 

 wearing pads below the girdle, so that the drapery should fall in 

 unbroken sweep from the bosom to the ground. Many were the 

 shafts aimed by ribald writers against this extraordinary device ; 

 many the unjust imputations to which it gave rise : 



" Some say Nature's rights 'tis invading 

 This sham swelling garb to put on : 

 For how, with these false bills of lading, 

 Can ships by their rigging be known ? " 



It passed away, and the last ninety years have seen the beginning 

 and end of many other modes more unsightly and not less absurd. 

 Is it hoping too much that, seeing how fast the fashions fly, all 

 the ludicrous, hideous, and hurtful ones will, in the fullness of 

 time, have been discarded, and a return be made to the only 

 faultless model the world has ever seen ? — Abridged from an 

 article entitled C lothes in Blackwood's Magazine. 



Reaumur is quoted as having written, in 1720, of Bernard Palissy, the potter 

 and one of the procreators of geology, that "it was a hundred and fifty years ago 

 that a French author who seemed to glory in his ignorance of Latin and Greek 

 pointed out a h.rge number of places in the kingdom where shells are buried. I 

 mean Bernard Palissy, all of whose ideas I would not adopt, but whose spirit of 

 observation and clearness of style I admire extremely. I am little concerned 

 about his lack of literary knowledge, but I can not repress a regret that he had 

 to make pots and follow the art of faience to make a living for himself and his 

 family." R6aumur, says a French journal, would be consoled if he knew the 

 price the pots he despised so heartily would bring now. 



