A GARMENT FOR BEAUTY. 189 
For silk is a noble and in nowise pretentious attire, which lends a 
subdued charm to the exuberant liveliness of youth, and clothes declin- 
ing beauty with its most tender and touching radiance. 
A genuine mystery attends it which is not without attraction. 
Colour or gloss? Cotton has its peculiar gloss, and, when fitly pre- 
pared, often acquires’ an agreeable freshness. Silk is not properly 
glossy, but luminous,—with a soft electrical ight, which harmonizes 
naturally with the electricity of the woman. A living tissue, it em- 
braces willingly the living person. 
Oriental ladies, before they foolishly adopted our Western customs, 
wore but two kinds of stuff: underneath, the real cashmere (of so fine 
a texture that a large shawl might be passed through a ring); and 
above, a beautiful tunic of silk of a pale blonde, or rather straw colour, 
with a gleam or flash of magnetic amber. 
These two articles were less garments than friends,—gentle slaves, 
_-—supple and charming flatterers: the cashmere warm, caressing, and 
plant, enfolding the bather lovingly when she emerged from her bath ; 
the silk tunic, on the contrary, light and aérial, only not too diaphanous. 
Its blonde whiteness agreed most admirably with the colour of her skin; 
one might indeed have very justly said that it had imbibed that colour 
through its constant intimacy and accustomed tenderness. Inferior to 
_ the skin, undoubtedly, yet it seemed related to it; or rather it became in 
the end a part of the body, and, as it were, melted into it, like a dream 
which informs our whole existence, and cannot be separated from it. 
