beauties which come from delicate concords and
truly artistic combinations. They verge towards barbarism, and require
things that are strange, odd, dazzling, and peculiar to captivate their
jaded senses. Such we take to be the condition of Parisian society now.
The tone of it is given by women who are essentially impudent and
vulgar, who override and overrule, by the mere brute force of opulence
and luxury, women of finer natures and moral tone. The court of France
is a court of adventurers, of _parvenus_; and the palaces, the toilets,
the equipage, the entertainments, of the mistresses outshine those of
the lawful wives. Hence comes a style of dress which is in itself
vulgar, ostentatious, pretentious, without simplicity, without unity,
seeking to dazzle by strange combinations and daring contrasts.

"Now, when the fashions emanating from such a state of society come to
our country, where it has been too much the habit to put on and wear,
without dispute and without inquiry, any or everything that France
sends, the results produced are often things to make one wonder. A
respectable man, sitting quietly in church or other public assembly, may
be pardoned sometimes for indulging a silent sense of the ridiculous in
the contemplation of the forest of bonnets which surround him, as he
humbly asks himself the question, Were these meant to cover the head, to
defend it, or to ornament it? and if they are intended for any of these
purposes, how?

"I confess, to me nothing is so surprising as the sort of things which
well-bred women serenely wear on their heads with the idea that they are
ornaments. On my right hand sits a good-looking girl with a thing on her
head which seems to consist mostly of bunches of grass, straws, with a
confusion of lace, in which sits a draggled bird, looking as if the cat
had had him before the lady. In front of her sits another, who has a
glittering confusion of beads swinging hither and thither from a jaunty
little structure of black and red velvet. An anxious-looking matron
appears under the high eaves of a bonnet with a gigantic crimson rose
crushed down into a mass of tangled hair. She is _ornamented_! she has
no doubt about it.

"The fact is, that a style of dress which allows the use of everything
in heaven above or earth beneath requires more taste and skill in
disposition than falls to the lot of most of the female sex to make it
even tolerable. In consequence, the flowers, fruits, grass,