Wisconsin State Agricultural Society . 
441 
also seem to be secondary utilities in dress not to be overlooked. 
These minor qualities of good sensible garments have shared tlie 
fate of primary ones, and we have still “disguising, endenting, bar¬ 
ring, winding, and bending,' 1 as in the days of Chaucer. Burdened 
by this superfluity of resources, we are yet in the condition long 
since announced: 
“ I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here, 
Musing in my mind what raiment I shall wear; 
For now I will wear this, and now I will wear that, 
And now I will wear—I cannot tell what . v 
The unsympathetic poet leaves our friend at this juncture. We 
know not whether he was ever able to dress himself. Notwith¬ 
standing the violence it does to our feelings, our opinion is he never 
was able. We look upon him, surrounded by so many and so di¬ 
verse garments, as in the position of the famous hypothetical, met¬ 
aphysical donkey, placed between two bundles of hay. exactly 
equi-distant to the thousandth of an inch. He never could make 
up his mind which to choose, and perished by the equilibrium of 
motives, a martyr to philosophy. Philosophy has its martyrs; so, 
doubtless, did fashion in our English kinsman. 
The plea, when airy is offered, under which this entire oversight 
of the ends of dress proceeds, is that of beauty. Woman, it is said, 
ought to adorn herself. Through her, chiefly, the delights and high 
indulgences of taste find access to the race. If she were to submit 
her garments to the somber utilities, the work-day conveniences of 
life, the more brilliant light and fascination of beauty would at 
once fade out of existence, and we should have made a few petty 
gains, gathered trifling crumbs of physical comfort, at the expense 
of most that is enlivening, bewitching and controlling in female 
character and social intercourse. If there were any real truth in 
this presentation; if fashion accorded with taste, though missing 
utility; if it wrought with beauty in society, then we would with¬ 
draw our criticism abashed. Quite the reverse is true. Our gar¬ 
ments no more commend themselves to ingenuous, cultivated feeling 
than they do to plain, honest, common sense. This we shall try to 
show. 
In the first place, beauty, though not the same as utility, cannot 
be secured in defiance and rejection of it. That which neglects, in 
construction, the obvious uses for which it is made, is so far mon- 
