irrelevant and dispensable corollary to gentility, while luxury is
its main prop and stay. Furthermore, that improvidence is a virtue of such
lustre, that itself or its likeness is essential to the very existence of
respectability; and, by carrying out this proposition, that in order to
make the least amount of extravagance produce the utmost admiration and
envy, it is desirable to be improvident as publicly as possible; the means
for such expenditure being gleaned from retrenchments in the home
department. Thus, by a system of domestic alchemy, the education of the
children is resolved into a vehicle; a couple of maids are amalgamated
into a man in livery; while to a single drudge, superintended and aided by
the mistress and elder girls, is confided the economy of the pantry, from
whose meagre shelves are supplied supplementary blondes and kalydors.

Now a system of economy which can induce a mother to "bring up her
children at home," while she regards a phaeton as absolutely necessary to
convey her to church and to her tradespeople, and an annual visit to the
sea-side as perfectly indispensable to restore the faded complexions of
Frances and Jemima, ruined by late hours and hot cream, may be considered
open to censure by the philosopher who places women (and girls, _i.e._
unmarried women) in the rank of responsible or even rational creatures.
But in this disposition he would be clearly wrong. Before venturing to
define the precise capacity of either an individual or a class, their own
opinion on the subject should assuredly be consulted; and we are quite
sure that there is not one of the lady Tiptoes who would not recoil with
horror from the suspicion of advancing or even of entertaining an idea--it
having been ascertained that everything original (sin and all) is quite
inconformable with the feminine character--unless indeed it be a method of
finding the third side of a turned silk--or of defining that zero of
fortune, to stand below which constitutes a "detrimental."

The Misses Tiptoe are an indefinite number of young ladies, of whom it is
commonly remarked that some may have been pretty, and others may,
hereafter, be pretty. But they never _are_ so; and, consequently, they are
very fearful of being eclipsed by their dependents, and take care to
engage only ill-favoured governesses, and (but 'tis an old pun) very plain
cooks. The great business of their lives is fascination, and in its
pursuit they are unremitting.