to the beautiful
and the fitting in costume, based on a higher law than the enactments
of the fashion-makers. You must judge for yourself how far you can
make the latter bend to the former. We have been talking of dress as
an individual matter. In future chapters we shall have occasion to
refer to it in its relation to the usages of society.

VIII.--SIGNS OF "THE GOOD TIME COMING."

N. P. Willis, in the _Home Journal_, writing on the dress-reform
agitation, thus closes his disquisition:

"We repeat, that we see signs which look to us as if the present
excitement as to _one_ fashion were turning into a universal inquiry
as to the sense or propriety of _any fashion at all_. When the subject
shall have been fully discussed, and public attention fully awakened,
common sense will probably take the direction of the matter, and
opinion will settle in some shape which, at least, may reject former
excesses and absurdities. Some moderate similarity of dress is
doubtless necessary, and there are proper times and places for long
dresses and short dresses. These and other points the ladies are
likely to come to new decisions about. While they consult health,
cleanliness, and convenience, however, we venture to express a hope
that they will _get rid of the present slavish uniformity_--that what
is becoming to each may be worn without fear of unfashionableness, and
that in this way we may see every woman dressed somewhat differently
and to her own best advantage, and the _proportion of beauty largely
increased_, as it would, thereby, most assuredly be."

FOOTNOTE:

[A] "Hints toward Physical Perfection; or, How to Acquire and Retain
Beauty, Grace, and Strength, and Secure Long Life and Perpetual
Youth."

III.

SELF-CULTURE

There is no man who can so easily and so naturally become in
all points a Gentleman Knight, without fear and without
reproach, as a true American Republican.--_James Parton._

I.-MORAL AND SOCIAL TRAINING.

Having given due attention to your personal habits and dress, consider
what special errors still remain to be corrected, or what deficiencies
to be supplied, and carefully and perseveringly apply yourself to the
required self-training.

If you are sensible of an inadequate development of any of those
faculties or feelings on which good manners are based, set yourself at
once about the work of cultivation, remembering that the legitimate
exercise of any organ or functio