dies, that is at all
tolerable. All this refers, however, only to that portion of the fairer
half of the human race which is in the bloom and vigour of youth and
womanhood: those that are still in childhood, or sinking into the vale
of years, cannot have a more inappropriate, more useless, covering for
the head than what they now wear, at least in England. Simplicity, which
should be the attribute of youth, and dignity, which should belong to
age, cannot be compatible with a modern bonnet: fifty inventions might
be made of coverings more suitable to these two stages of life.

How, then, has it come to pass that women have persuaded themselves, or
have been overpersuaded, into the belief that a bonnet is the highest
point of perfection in their dress? It has all been done by a foolish
imitation of the caprices of French milliners, themselves actuated by
millions of caprices and fancies--but at the same time by one
steadily-enduring principle, that novelty and change, no matter how
useless, how extravagant, form the soul of their peculiar trade. For,
note it down--the bonnet mania has not mounted upwards from the lower to
the higher ranks of society; on the contrary, it has been a regular
plant, sown as a trifling casual seed in the hotbed of some silly
creature's brain, and then sending down its roots into many an inferior
class. Any one who has crossed the British Channel, knows that the
bonnet--as we understand the word in England--is not an article of
national costume in any portion of the world except our own
island--America and Australia we place, of course, out of the pale of
taste. In France itself, the peasantry, and all classes of women
immediately under the conventional denomination of ladies, wear
_bonnets_. This word does not signify the same thing as with us, gentle
reader. The French word _bonnet_ means a snow-white cap, whether rising
into an enormous cone, like those of the Norman beauties, or limited to
a jaunting frill and lappels, like those of the Parisian grisettes. The
real bonnets, the French female _chapeau_, is worn only by those who
call themselves ladies; and this difference of costume marks a most
decided difference of rank and self-esteem in the various grades of
Gallic society. In the Bourbonnois, it is true, and in some parts of
Switzerland and Germany, straw-hats of various sizes are worn by the
peasantry; but these do not resemble the actual bonnet of the nineteenth
century. Who does not