With the age of persecution, this child-like and touching simplicity of Christian art ceased. Called from the gloomy vaults of the catacombs to adorn the churches erected by Constantine and his successors, it gradually developed to the many coloured splendour of the magnificent frescoes and mosaics of the basilicas. It became more and more personal and historical, and less abstract and doctrinal. The technical manipulation became less understood, and the artistic conception of form more and more feeble, till it gradually stiffened into the formal and immobile types which characterize Byzantine art. It is of importance, however, as enabling us to trace the development of religious ideas, and the introduction of additions to primitive belief, and as showing the slow progress toward the veneration of images. It demonstrates the non-apostolicity of certain doctrines, the beginnings of which can be here detected. It utters its voiceless protest against certain others which are sought for in vain in the place where, according to medieval theory, they should certainly be found. It is to this period that most of the condemnations of art, or rather of its abuse, in the writings of the primitive Fathers, must be referred. Towards the close of the fourth century, Augustine inveighs against the superstitious reverence for pic tures, as well as the growing devotion to the sepulchres, which he says the church condemned and endeavored to correct.* In the beginning of the century the Council of Elvira, as if with prescience of the evil consequences that would follow their toleration, prohibited the use of pictures in the churches, "lest that which is worshipped and adored should be painted on the walls.”+ Where still employed in the catacombs, art shared the corruption and degradation above described, which became all the deeper with the progressive debasement of the later empire. Amid the gathering shadows of the dark ages, it became more sombre and austere, filling the mind of the spectator with gloom and terror. Thus art, which is the daughter of Paganism, relapsing into the service of superstition, has corrupted and often paganized Christianity, as Solomon's heathen wives turned his heart from the worship of the true God to the practice of idolatry. Lecky attributes this degradation of art to the latent Manicheanism of the dark ages, to the monkish fear of beauty as a deadly temptation, and, later, to the terrible pictures of Dante, which opened up such an abyss of horror to their imagination. *Aug. de Morib. Cathol., lib. i., c. 34. MODERN DRESS. BY MRS. C. R. CORSON. IT T has often been said that the style is the man; we might also venture to add that the dress is the woman and, in many lamentable instances, that the woman is the dress and nothing more. Without entering upon any intricate discussion about the expediencies, proprieties or improprieties of fashion, or prophesying that better future, when every one shall be a fashion to himself, we would venture a few remarks on the prevailing mode of dressing, and its moral effects on the rising generation. It were hard to determine what is absolutely beautiful and absolutely ugly; the significance of these terms being altogether relative; but it were well to study when a thing is ugly and when it is beautiful, and apply the rule to our style of dress. Accidents in nature are very often beauties. A deformed weather-beaten tree in an otherwise pleasing landscape may prove a necessary discord in its harmony, and hence pass for a beauty; but discords and concords have their established laws, their raison d'être, and as the world is supposed to travel towards an æsthetic as well as moral excellence, we would fain maintain that dress, considered in the light of art, becomes a vital question the moment it affects the education of taste. duced into otherwise pure-minded communities; and, like the sensation novel, prove as subtle a poison in corrupting their sense of the beautiful, as the former their minds and hearts. Our fashions, with a few exceptions, come from France. Every country has its speciality. The natural good taste of the French, their tact, their quick sense of appropriateness have given their styles the grace, the fitness and the usefulness society admires in them. Germany, with all its profundity, and with all its solidity and honesty of character, could not turn out a graceful hat-such a moral, philosophical, scientific, literary hat for example, as used to be found at the Paris Emporium of "Vital, successeur de Finot, fabricant de chapeaux." This illustrious hatter, by giving certain inflections to certain lines, formed from the same model an infinity of variations, which became, as occasion required, physicians', grocers', dandies', artists', fat men's, lean men's hats. He once followed up a man's political career in the modifications he made in his hat, and when the former had reached the desired position, he presented him with a hat, in every way expressive of the juste-milieu of his sentiments. The Berlin costume "faultily faultless, Our own moral rectitude and innate icily regular, splendidly null," is "dead persense of the beautiful, in a great measure, fection, nothing more"; it lacks the life, the regulate our taste; yet in new countries (to use a very pedantic word, and seemingly where art is still in its infancy, and the pub- out of place here) spontaneousness which lic mind still unschooled in that direction, the characterizes all French workmanship eye takes in all forms and shapes with but from the simplest to the most elaborate. little discrimination; and the extravagance Berlin may claim the goddess-the Venus of dress, the Bohemian taste of a certain class perfection of every limb-but France is in of women whose very irregularities of life possession of the girdle, and it is by the have often dictated a fashion, are thus intro-puissance of this girdle that she rules the will of the civilized world, in respect to dress. Long may she For, despite the extravagance of her fashion-plates, and the absurdity of the model hats she sends to the American milliners, common sense and reason, have ever been the basis of her own home-fashions. She provides graciously for all conditions of life, and so practical are the laws she lays down for her light-headed children, so adapted her patterns to their various wants, that all instinctively submit to that higher wisdom, glad to be saved the trouble of studying colour and form, and fully convinced that they could never invent a more suitable garment than the one she has always in readiness for every demand and every occasion. The main point lies in the proper discipline of all these shapes and folds, their right employment. We need hyperbole even in dress, witness the accusation brought against the renowned actress, Mademoiselle Favart, whose correct taste prevents her from finding the key-note to her stage attire-her costume, simplex munditiis, lacks character. The thing needed then adaptation. A most difficult thing, how ever, it will prove, to show how to adapt to a reasonable head that semblance of a hat, that meaningless little nut-shell outrageously decked with bunches of ribbons, flowers, feathers, which gives at present to our wives and daughters so alarming a look of insanity. What are its claims?-lightness, airiness? A great mass of hair is required to give it a basis, and the load of it on the head lies anything but lightly. The times have changed since fair Belinda's two precious locks were clipped; men are not so susceptible to capillary attraction as they once were, and it takes more than “a single hair" now-a-days, to ensnare "man's imperial race." An obvious purpose of a hat or bonnet is a protection to the head; and, in addition to this strictly physical purpose, a moral purpose is superadded that seemly covering enjoined upon women by the Apostle Paul. It would lead us quite astray from our present purpose, to trace the mazy labyrinths of influences (if indeed that were possible) that resulted in the negation of hats and bonnets which characterizes the present mode. In looking back a number of years, we see it come in, hand in hand, as it were, with the grand idea of the emancipation of women, and it is certainly a matter to be regretted that so noble an idea should present itself so ridiculously symbolized. In searching, however, with a little good will, we might even here find a redeeming feature in the case, namely, that all through history, great purposes have often borrowed the fool's cap and bells, to conceal their mighty interests. Brutus, planning the Tarquins' overthrow, plays the fool; Hamlet, to probe the soul of his murderous uncle-father, puts on the garb of insanity; the whole French nation, breaking the shell of tyranny, hides its conceptions of freedom under a red cap! What woman may have in store for us in the way of reasonableness, gentle forbearance, true companionship, wise homemanagement, under the curious little hat that so deceives us now, who knows! But let us endeavour to find an application for the existing styles. We shall always have among us the "lilies of the field,” that neither spin nor toil, and yet are arrayed in more glory than Solomon; those fair ones, merely "born to bloom and drop" let us kindly assign them the place the odorless, but bright, dahlia and the showy tulip hold in our gardens. We need, indeed, offsets to that fearful activity that whirls us along we know not whither; and who would dare to say which is the wiser, the lily's "maiden meditation fancy free," or the distracting steam engine? Thus may we find use for the elaborate costumes the Moniteur de la Mode sends us fresh from Paris; and very pretty indeed are some of them for our belles to stand in, or sit in, or dream in! For example, one tasty toilet, intended for a home costume, is. given as composed of a rich violet silk underskirt, scalloped at the bottom. A gray poplin upperskirt, flounced with the same violet silk as the underskirt, is brought apronlike around the sides which are held up by two heavy bows of violet silk; the rest, like the "hideous tail" of Spenser's Error is allowed to trail, "stretched forth at length without entraile." The sleeves, pagoda shape, are trimmed with violet silk, and flounced underneath with lace, to form an undersleeve, the waist, trimmed like the sleeves with violet silk, encircled by a violet velvet belt, forming heavy loops behind; a single square collar, and a neat little lace cap complete this home costume. Another, intended for the opera, is most ingeniously complicated, and we congratulate the seamstress and mantua-maker if they get paid for their work. An underskirt of black-satin is trimmed with trellis-work of gold-brown velvet folds, (the colour and material of the upperskirt) through which run a multitude of large and small grape-leaves, evidently meant to illustrate a grapery. The upper dress of rich goldbrown velvet is in its turn adorned in the same manner as the underdress, viz., with a trellis and grape-leaf work of black satin; the front forms two large points heavily fringed, and is caught up at the sides to form heavy puffs behind-the rest trails on the floor. If the fair one thus attired were to go to hear an opera of Offenbach, music and toilet would be well matched. We cannot help noticing also, the very simple travelling costume the Moniteur presents us with a dress of maroon cashmere, trimmed at the bottom with two wide flounces; these headed by a wide plaited trimming, edged on both sides by rufflings, the whole so designed as to form a labyrinth of conchs where the rufflings seem to chase each other in and out. The upperskirt is trimmed in the same way: short in front, and forming heavy puffs behind. The waist cut waist-coat shape has a postillion in the A white cloth sack richly braided and rear. trimmed with black velvet, ending in a black and white broom fringe, completes the suit. We hope these ruffled conchs will escape the almost inevitable catches of trunks and carpet-bags, and that the cinders and the soot from the locomotive will spare the white cloth sack, and that that long broom fringe may not get entangled at some unfortunate moment in the buttons of coats and overcoats, during the very close relations into which they are bought in travelling. We do not mean to be cynical, we only appeal to the common sense of the public in general, as to the reliance that can be placed on fashion plates. We have ourselves had occasion to compare the reality of things with these-we can hardly call them idealities without insulting the ideal— with these caricatures, and rejoiced at the generally prevailing good sense of the Parisian dress-public. In the ball-room we see the vapoury gauze, tarlatan, tulle, fashioned for dancing purposes; at the opera gorgeous materials worked into elegant simplicity; at the dinner party, velvets and silks, majestically draped, and made to show their capabilities in sweeping the drawing-room, and reclining on the sofas; in the street, the neat unpretending walking costume escaping all notice by its modest cut and sober colours; at home, the easy morning dress, and quiet evening toilet; in the school-room a quaker plainness: no signs of the existing follies, all is simple and suited to the occasion. The seamstress going to her daily work would not dream, passing by the shop windows, and gazing at its allurements, of imitating the costumes on exhibition; the chambermaid has her own neat attire, suitable for her service, and would no more crave an India shawl, than she would the rain-bow; the cook would scorn encumbering herself with puffs and bustles and hoops amidst her pots and kettles; the toilet of the French bonne has almost become proverbial for its modest simplicity. But, across the |