Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
445 
is present, powerfully present, touches matter with a masterly hand, 
yet with one so coy and delicate as to distort nothing from its office, 
lose none of its own supremacy, turn not a single eye aside from 
itself, or leave one relaxed, idle thought to travel off to its garments 
in search of interest and amusement. On the other hand, when 
these are engrossing, they have a language and character quite their 
own, call forth peculiar emotions, and leave the mind at a long re¬ 
move from sprightly thought and animated sentiment. There 
would be a superfluity, a lack of economy in sound speech, coming 
from one in the wrapt presentation and handling of showy dress, 
quite out of keeping with nature’s ordinary frugality and unity of 
impression, and wholly irrelevant to the wants of the parties con¬ 
cerned. The moment manhood and womanhood begin to take the 
reins of intellectual and moral power, that love is enthroned on 
the regal brow of thought, there is a falling off of these irrelevant 
accidents of life, a sinking into light and graceful government of 
these passing conditions of the hour. The precept of the apostle, 
“Whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting 
the hair, of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but let 
it be the hidden man of the heart,” is a command resting on a basis 
as sound esthctically as ethically. There is no high human beauty 
in which the mind and heart do not merely stand pre-eminently 
out, but in which they do not hold? in easy, habitual subjection, all 
their physical conditions, direct and indirect. Society, as a rule, is 
frivolous, foolish, even vicious, according to the degree in which it 
gives itself to that form of taste which finds expression in personal 
adornments. It therein misses the real gist of human beauty, on 
its physical as well as spiritual side, for the beauty of the body even 
is of that simple, high art that will not suffer itself to be over-laid 
with tawdry ornament. As the statue admits of no decoration, must 
stand by itself with its own sufficient graces, so real beauty hides 
out of sight the ornament that has been put upon it, and not till it 
has done this, do we understand how regal it is. 
If it be said, most persons lack striking beauties, either of bod} r 
or of mind, and should be allowed, therefore, to cover the deficien¬ 
cy and atone for it by the attractions of dress, certainly, we answer, 
if these are the attractions of dress thus offered. We decline so to 
regard costliness, things whose estimate depends on a knowledge of 
