x 882.] 
Fashions and Evolution . 
593 
VI. FASHIONS AND EVOLUTION, 
By D. Y. Cuff. 
(J3) Y “ Evolution” I intend in it the sense of “ alteration,” 
yp) one way or another. All of us are often struck with 
the partially vain efforts of old women “ to look 
young,” and the wild despair that refuses to be called “ old,” 
nay, nor yet “ middle-aged,” until they are too hideous even 
to behold themselves. Our great Elizabeth shrunk horrified 
from her glass many years before she died, and indignantly 
ordered the too faithful coin-die to be destroyed. We feel 
assured that Eve herself must have wept over her departing 
charms. 
All this perseverance, mental and physical, for countless 
ages must have had a very definite effect on her progeny. 
May it not be seen in the very brutes ? If these fits, it be 
said, do"only come on in later life, it cannot be denied that 
they are in full activity in the mother.* It is a very familiar 
faCt what a marked effect the thoughts, &c., particularly the 
terrors, of a parent have on the child unborn. 
Then, perhaps, it is more than a vague theory to argue 
that this vain tendency in woman (and man for that matter) 
is really “ a great and lasting benefit ” to humanity : with 
Bentham we can say it “ enables a greater number to live 
happier,” &c. — in a word, improves the “ human face divine.” 
This being a “ fault ” of man’s too (howbeit in a smaller 
degree) the whole human race is rendered handsomer and 
more agreeable to look upon for a longer period of life : many 
other effects necessarily follow therefrom. One would say 
that the foot of a Chinese lady, naturally grown, would be 
smaller than ordinary where it was a family practice. I am 
inclined to think, from an inspection of engravingst of old 
Greek statuary, that our modern “ thin waist ” (as now un- 
derstood) amongst females is the result of fashion, and that 
from even so late in the world’s history as the earliest civili- 
sation in Greece, and maybe in Egypt. Nay, the tapering 
may be almost said to be outwards and downwards from 
* Some hold that the children of elderly or old parents are handsomer than 
those of younger ones. Is there even a partial truth in this ? (Of course 
other items step in as well.) 
f My source is “ The Pi&orial Gallery of Arts,” vol. ii., 1847. 
