than for adornment, as coquetry is no part of the character of this substantial and practical nation.

In Switzerland and the German States we find a great variety of female costumes, some of which are elegant and fanciful, others awkward and grotesque. Hats of various forms, made of chips or straw, are worn-the dresses are short, to give such freedom as is requisite to women employed in active labors; and the ornamental, though of a rude and sometimes ungraceful character, is by no means disregarded.

In Switzerland, the hair is almost universally braided and allowed to hang down the back, in one or more plaits -the hat, whether flat and broad as an umbrella, or with a pointed crown, is worn jauntingly, and full white sleeves, with a bodice of a darker color, cover the arms.

The female costumes of the vicinity of Vienna, and of Bavaria, are much like the English, with a greater variety of head dress. Some of these are extremely becoming.

In Poland and Southern Russia, the national costumes assume an oriental character. The robes are long and flowing. The head is covered with a turban, and the ornaments are rich and showy. We must not forget that all oriental women paint. In Russia, a high color is considered the chief beauty, and it is laid on without stint. So that a woman is fat, she has no fear but that she can make herself handsome. In Russia, the word which signifies belle, means red virgin!

The costumes of Southern Europe are of great variety and singularly picturesque. What, for example, can be more ravishing than the costume of the pretty girls of Minorca? A purple bodice or waist, with long and well fitting sleeves, buttons up in front, but towards the neck is left open, and turns over, revealing a fine chemisette. The dark hair hangs in ringlets down the neck, and over the head is thrown a dark mantilla or robazilla; the skirt of yellow or other fanciful color, hangs very full and reaches just below the knee, while beautiful, close fitting red, blue, or green stockings, clocked with a different color, and neat embroidered shoes, a fan in one hand, and her rosary in the other, complete the costume.

Some of the pretty Spanish costumes resemble the

above, only that the dresses are worn much longer; but as a general rule, the Spanish costumes are dark, and of a more sober character. The mantilla or reboza is quite an indispensable article of female costume. The female costume of Catalonia is, however, as gay and fanciful as could be desired.

The women of Italy, instead of cap, bonnet or turban, wear upon their heads a towel, which is neatly folded and hangs down, displaying at its ends long fringes of different colors. The dress of Venetian ladies partakes of the sombre colors of the Spanish, and the elegance and coquetry of the French. The costumes of Modern Greece are a singular jumble of the classic, the modern European and the Oriental.

There is no extensive country in the world in which the whole people dress so much alike or so well as in the United States. We have no such thing as a national or a provincial costume. In other countries, while the few people of fashion dress according to the changing modes of the times, the great mass of the people follow the various customs of their forefathers; but here we have no exclusive circle.

All dress in fashion, from our great cities to the smallest villages, and from one end of the Union to the other, and instead of a few thousands, we have twenty millions of fashionable people, whose tailors, dress-makers and milliners closely follow the latest modes of Paris. The foreigner looks round with surprise, and asks, where are the common people-where are the peasantry? He finds at length that he is in a nation of sovereigns, and that the court circle includes the entire population.

The American and European female costumes of fashion are continually changing in slight degrees, yet it is remarkable that each style, while worn, appears graceful and becoming, while it no sooner glides into an opposite style, than it looks strange and uncouth to us. Recall for example the fashion of from eighteen to twenty years ago. The dress, without the recent fulness around the hips, flared out at the bottom, and was so short, as scarcely to cover half the calf. The arm sleeves were like two large balloons, and stiffened out with whale-bone, or stiff millinet,

to a greater circumference than the waist itself, which, at the same time, was laced into its narrowest possible compass. Add to this dress a fantastic bonnet of indescribable shape, immense dimensions, and covered with huge bunches of ribbons and artificial flowers, within and without, and we have the picture of a belle who, at that time, attracted universal admiration; but who, if she should now appear in public, could scarcely avoid being followed by a mob: yet this would not be a stranger sight at this day than would have been the close-fitting sleeve, the long tapering waist, the vast amplitude and length of skirt, the huge bustle, and petite bonnet of a more recent fashion, at the period to which we have alluded. There is scarcely a more unaccountable phenomenon connected with the human mind than these changes of taste, in accordance with the caprices of fashion.

It is, therefore, scarcely safe to say that the fashion of the day is the perfection of female costume; since, in ten years, we may be laughed at for such an assertion. Still, comparing the present with the various modes of the past, we cannot help being struck with what seems to us its superior elegance. The style of dressing the hair is classic and becoming; tending, however, to too much ornament. The caps are neat, the bonnets of a medium size and pleasing form.

The close fitting sleeve, it is impossible not to prefer to a load of unsymmetrical drapery, and the upper portion of the form is displayed in all its fair proportions, while the lower is enveloped in a flowing drapery, which has, at times, been carried to a great excess. The enormity of the bustle in a short time gave place to skirts made of elastic materials so as to keep the draperies distended; while the nicest art of the dress-maker was put in requisition to supply the deficiencies of nature, but after these sheets were written, and before they had passed through the press, a change of fashion has reduced the skirts to their narrowest dimensions!

The great length of the dress is probably a fault of the present fashion. It is difficult to fix rules in this respect, or to say how much or how little of the female form should be exposed to public inspection. The arms in full dress,

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are naked, and the shoulders and bosom are displayed with as much liberality as is probably desirable; but it is a strange nicety, that reveals so much of the upper portion of the person, and entirely conceals the beautiful symmetry of the lower limbs by skirts that sweep the ground, and make the display of the prettiest foot or most finely turned ankle, a matter of accident or coquetry.

Since white and red are considered essential to female beauty, chalk or pearl powder, and rouge must be allowed, and are used almost universally; but unless laid on with extreme care and the utmost skill, the eye of a man of any experience detects them instantly. But it is quite useless to declaim against the supposed improvement of beauty by artifice; since it has been practised in all ages and nations. A witty writer has said that if a Chinese lady knew that she should be seen by a man only once in twenty years, and then only for one moment, she would carefully paint her face every day for all that period!

The strictly ornamental part of female costume, in countries of European fashion, is of great variety. Rings are worn on the fingers, and through holes bored in the ears, but not in the nose nor on the toes, as in Asia and Africa. Necklaces of gold and precious stones are worn, and bracelets on the arms, as in barbarous countries, but not around the ankles. Like the Indians, our ladies wear ostrich feathers and birds of paradise in their head-dress, and natural and artificial flowers. Ribbons, ruffles, and laces, form an important part of their ornamental costume. Veils are worn, not as in the East for concealment, but for greater display. Fans, bags, parasols, gold pencils, watches, &c., though worn under the pretence of utility, are still more intended for ornament.

Without counting gold, and gems, which, as worn by some ladies, are of enormous value; the full dress of a lady of fashion is of great cost. There are dresses sold at many of our stores at from two to three hundred dollars a pattern; shawls for a thousand; laces which cost more than their weight in gold; pocket handkerchiefs at a hundred dollars each; muffs at a hundred; so that without reckoning jewelry, a fashionable lady may easily wear two or three thousand dollars worth of clothing.

But these are harmless follies, compared with those which affect the health and destroy the constitution. The. practice of tight lacing is one which finds but two parallels within our memory. Those are the bandaging of the feet of the Chinese infants, and the stuffing of the young girls among the Moors. The Chinese women are partially crippled by this practice, but it does not give them curvature of the spine nor consumption; while the process of fattening Moorish beauties, where they are not killed outright with the surfeit, is said not even to cause the dyspepsia. But the tight bandages and torturing stays, worn to secure the very opposite of Moorish or indeed of classic beauty, and reduce the female form to the model of the wasp or spider, interfere with the healthy action of the most important of the vital organs, and produce the most terrible diseases and deformities to which the human race is liable. In this respect the most savage costumes are superior to the most civilized, and it would be better to wear no more clothing than the Australians, than to dress in such a manner as to murder the individual and gradually destroy the race.

But this portion of our subject will scarcely prove satisfactory to those who take a deep interest in its details, if we neglect to give at least, a brief sketch of the history of female costumes in bygone ages.

A grand distinction between the lower animals and man, is that the former receive all their clothing and ornaments from nature, while the latter improves his by art-While fish are furnished with scales, the turtle and armadillo with shells, quadrupeds with thick fur and glossy hair, birds with variegated plumage, man is left almost wholly naked; but nature, in recompense, has given man the art to use shells, skins, furs and feathers for his own ornament and use.

We have seen, that while in cold climates clothing is as universal as it is necessary, in tropical regions there is the widest difference in this respect. In some countries, the forms of females are wholly enveloped and concealed, and the removal of a veil is an outrage against modesty, while in the same latitudes women appear with or without clothing with entire indifference, and the sentiment of modesty, in this respect, has no apparent existence. If then, it ap