"At any rate, the dress of the belles was not more ridiculous than that of the beaux," said Mrs. Gazelle. "How like a dancing Jack that nice gentleman deports himself! How I should like to see Captain S. in such costume, figuring by the side of Mrs. Z. !"

"And here is another model head-dress of the same period-feathers were then much worn, especially in fulldress dinner parties," said Mrs. Worthington. "I hope they will never become obsolete, as I think them graceful and becoming ornaments, and not very expensive; and ornaments of some kind we shall always find worn."

"But we do not always cut such droll figures as these old fashions show, do we, Mr. Montague?" asked Mrs. Gazelle.

"If we do not all cut figures, we use them," he replied: "and that reminds me of a curious collection of these common phrases and their application, which a friend of mine handed me the other day. Oh, here it is," and he drew from his pocket the following paper, which we hope will amuse our readers as much as it did the ladies to whom he read it:

We are not aware of the figurative language we constantly use. Our dress furnishes an inexhaustible wardrobe in which to dress our ideas. We speak of our habits generally, whether good or bad; then of certain habits individually.

Each garment has been hung up in a proverb-thus, "if the cap fits, wear it." "Set your cap," is rather a reproachful saying; but, "put a feather in your cap," and sunshine glances on it-lights and shadows.

What a misfortune "to be put to your-nether garment:" to be without it altogether, is poverty indeed, much worse than to be "out at elbows."

The skirt is taken for hangers on.

To "throw down the glove," is a defiance; to be collared is defeat. A man is disgraced who shows "a white feather."

To be ruffled with cambrics, is ornamental; but to be ruffled with temper, is a reproach.

What wife, if she has any regard for her dignity, would have it said that she wore the breeches: if she were wise she would rather cloak them.

To be bare-faced, is to be impudent; to be veiled is to be modest.

To be tight-laced in one's ideas, is as bad as to be tightlaced in one's person. Who does not know, in this season of mercantile embarrassment, what it is to be pinched? Extravagance and the times have emptied the pockets of the rich. Many who thought their pockets deep, have, on sounding them, found them shallow indeed.

The mention of a straight-waistcoat fills the imagination with melancholy.

How much sycophancy is indicated by standing cap-inhand.

Hypocrisy often cloaks her vices under the appearance of white-robed innocence.

There are garments that at once proclaim-if not the man, his station. "The gown" denotes the lawyer. A "silk gown," a crown lawyer. The Lord Chancellor has his robes. The king, "his ermine," which is as marked as his crown. The "tiara," is the pope-a catechresis, (a part for the whole.) How ardently the Roman youth aspired to the dignity of the mantle, we all know.

Desdemona lost her life for a pocket-handkerchief; and a favourite of queen Elizabeth's trembled for his bishoprick, when she threatened to unfrock him.

Aprons are the aspirations of the British clergy-to their strings are attached bishopricks.

The pope has seventy red hats in his gift. How ardently they are sought for, and intrigued for, the Roman Catholic history reveals.

"To take the veil"-two pictures start up, both of youth and beauty-(every nun, as every bride, is a beauty) -the one renouncing the pomps and vanities of this wicked world for prayer, praise and penance; the other torn from a world she loved by the will of a relentless and ambitious parent, whose sole object for sacrificing the happiness of his daughter, was to leave a larger fortune to his son. Catholicity, you have many such sins to answer for, they cannot be always veiled.

None can hear the two words-"the turbaned," without knowing that the word "Turk" must follow; as certainly as the shadow does sunshine.

We Americans-European Americans I mean-are not exactly without costume, for no people, taking them as a mass, have so many clothes to put on, but we are a people without a national costume.

Ribbons-blue, red, and white, have lured many a hero to his death.

Spurs and garters are noblemen's toys.

Hats, ribbons, spurs, and garters, are regal rewards; we republicans are not caught with such trifles. So ends my inventory.

"The Gift for 1844," is the most superb annual ever published in this country. It is a large octavo of 300 pages on beautiful smooth paper, luxuriously large type, and bound in the most sumptuous style. The literary matter must of necessity be first rate, as it is produced chiefly by some of the most popular contributors to the Lady's Book. Mrs. Sigourney, Miss Leslie, Miss H. F. Gould, Mrs. Seba Smith. and Mrs. Ellet have furnished first rate articles, as usual, and Messrs. N. P. Willis, W. Gilmore Simms, Seba Smith, Epes Sargent, Park Benjamin, and H. T. Tuckerman have enriched the volume with some of their best and happiest efforts. We are particularly pleased with Willis's Story "Beware of Dogs and Waltzing," and that of Seba Smith, "The Young Traders." The engravings are all executed by three engravers, who also favour us with their plates, Messrs. Cheney, Pease, and Humphreys; and they have the merit of being all engraved from designs of American artists. Huntington's celebrated "Beatrice," engraved by J. Cheney, is the frontispiece. It is one of those pictures that speaks, even

in the engraving. The sweeping plume is not more indicative of pride than every lineament of the face. The title-page vignette is one of Sully's exquisite youthful faces, also engraved by Cheney.

The next picture, "Mumble the Peg," is one of Inman's loveliest creations-a landscape and group so full of meaning and expression, that every one exclaims, at the first sight of it, "How lovely!" The sky, the trees, the distance, the figures are all rural quietness and repose. There is character, too, in those figures, one so full of easy confidence of success, and the other scratching his head, and evidently saying to himself, "I'm done for, now!" It reminds one of Burnet's Chess Players; but it is poetry, while the Chess Players is very hard prose. Pease has engraved this painting in his usual silvery style. The heads alone would make the fortune of any new engraver-but we are accustomed to look for excellence in Pease's plates.-The next plate, "The Fair Student," is one of those lovely heads which S. W. Cheney is so fond of drawing, and which J. Cheney has en

graved in his usual highly finished style. The attitude and eye express the most rapt attention, pleased attention too, as though the fair student was enjoying one of the lovely descriptions in Spenser's Fairy Queen. Inman is the painter of the beautiful picture, entitled "Early Days of Washington." The air of the peacemaker has all that authority in it which so distinctly pronounced the Father of his Country, one who was born to command. The next illustration, "The Disagreeable Surprise," is the work of Mount, the Momus of American painters. Every feature of it is charged with fun. It tells its own story too plainly to admit of comment; but "won't those young rogues catch it?" will be every one's exclamation on seeing this plate. The next, "The Young Traders," is a sportive effort from the epic pencil of W. Page. It is nature in her most careless attitude- truth in every line-a triumph of nature and truth over all artistical notions and fancies. "Viola," the last embellishment, comes from S. W. Cheney's easel. Those large, expressive, passionate eyes would make a characteristic feature in Bulwer's Viola, or the infant Malibran. So here ends the catalogue. Why have we not thousands of such pictures? It is because patrons of art like him who paid for these original paintings, are mighty scarce in these parts.

"Fairholme's Geology of Scripture," just published in a neat and cheap edition, by H. Hooker, Phila.. is a work of great interest to the believer in the inspiration of the Bible, as well as to the scholar and general reader; for while it gives a correct general view of the interesting science of geology, it neither disturbs the mind with doubt, nor poisons it with unbelief. The author's object is to account for the geological structure of the upper surface of our earth, which he thinks is satisfactorily explained in the three great events recorded in the inspired volume, viz: the creation, by the Almighty's fiat-the gathering together of the waters into one place, and the action of the laws of nature within their bed, for more than sixteen centuries; and lastly, the universal deluge.

Geological writers generally teach that our globe must have existed originally in a fluid, amorphous mass, from which, in the course of millions of years, it was formed, by the laws of nature, into a fit habitation for the higher orders of animated existence; and that, therefore, the commonly received interpretation of the "days" in the first of Genesis must be erroneous, and of course surrendered for an interpretation, which will accord with the geological theory, which assigns to this earth a date millions of years beyond that given to it by the inspired record. This is sheer hypothesis, which cannot be maintained; and in opposition to it Mr. F. says: "the idea of assigning unlimited periods to the days of creation, as recorded by Moses, has arisen from the necessity of a longer period than twenty-four hours for the completion of so great a chemical process as the supposed production of the earth from chaos. But, if first formations were not the consequence of chemical process, which Newton considered most unphilosophical, and which our reason and common sense most decidedly condemn, then the extension of the period demanded for their production becomes unnecessary." Mr. F. of course contends for the literal meaning of the Mosaic text, and ably argues that the facts of geology, as far as they are well understood, are in perfect harmony with the scripture; and this is manifestly true, if both the volume of creation and the volume of inspiration have the same infallible and immutable source.

Messrs. Lea & Blanchard have published "Memoirs of the Court of England, from the Revolution in 1688 to the Death of George the Second, by John Heneage Jesse, author of Memoirs of the Court of England, during the Reign of the Stuarts."" This series of Jesse's admirable "Memoirs," is in three handsome volumes, bound in muslin. It gives lively and graphic sketches of all the most distinguished characters of this most interesting period of English history. The lives of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough alone are worth the price of the volumes. Not less interesting are the memoirs of the brilliant and eccentric Duke of Wharton, and the notorious Duchess of

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Kingston. Lord Chesterfield, Mrs. Masham, and Lady Mary Wortley Montague, with a host of other personages of equal celebrity, also figure in these delightful annals. The same firm have also published the second volume of their beautiful cheap edition of the "Lives of the Queens of England," so admirably suited to gratify the curiosity of the ladies, with respect to the characters of royal personages of their sex. Mr. Cooper's new novel, "Wyandotte, or the Hutted Knoll," is also just published. It is in that famous novelist's best vein-full of thrilling and hair-breadth 'scapes, with many of those delightful delineations of American scenery and character, such as have long since won for this graphic writer an imperishable fame.

Messrs. Appleton & Co. of New York, and Mr. Geo. S. Appleton, of Philadelphia, have recently published a number of works in a very beautiful style. Among them are Sutton's "Disce Vivere, (Learn to Live,") one of those old standard books of practical devotion which resemble the solid massive plate in use at the time they were writ ten, and destined never to wear out while silver and gold are preferred to tinsel. The paper, print, binding, and embellishments are quite equal to those of the London editions of Pickering or the University press. The same remarks apply to "Spinckes's Churchman's Companion in the Closet," which is printed from the sixteenth London edition, and gives us every one of the beautiful embellishments which so appropriately decorate a book which a serious reader will naturally prize and wish to keep. The same house have just published the "Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott," in a single crown octavo volume, richly embellished with steel plates, and all the luxury of paper, print, and binding. The poems are also published by the same house, each separately, so that you may have your elegant pocket edition of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, the Lady of the Lake, &c., each by itself, without buying the others. The book, of all others recently published by the Appletons, which we regard with the greatest interest, is "The Wife of Leon, and other Poems, by Two Sisters of the West." We feel proud of this volume, as the work of American ladies. It will be cordially recognized as one among the many vouchers for the claim which we are accustomed so steadily to maintain for our country women to the highest literary honours. We recollect no first publication of any American poet which will bear comparison with this. There is force, vivacity, feeling-a perception of natural beauty-a sense of the harmony of nature and of poetry, and a felicity and grace of diction, which will place the writers in the most elevated rank of native poets. Much curiosity will be felt and expressed as to the who and the where of these ladies. We can add little to what the volume shows, viz., that they are highly educated per sons, who have had extensive opportunities of travel and observation, and that their natural gifts of imagination and poetical eloquence are of the highest order. We trust that this will not be their last publication.

Mr. E. H. Butler has published "Elements of Geome try, with Practical Applications, for the Use of Schools, by T. Walker; with an Elementary Treatise on Descriptive Geometry, by Professor Kendall, of the Philadelphia High School." This work has long been a classic in the schools and colleges of this country, and hardly requires to be commended to the notice of teachers. The new edition is embellished in a very novel and beautiful style, which is destined to become fashionable in mathematical works.

Messrs. Wiley and Putnam, of New York and London, have just issued "The Despatches of Hernando Cortes, the Conqueror of Mexico, addressed to the Emperor Charles V., written during the Conquest, and containing a Narrative of its Events; now first translated into English from the original Spanish, with an Introduction and Notes, by George Folsom." No work of equal interest with this has been published for a long period. As a narrative of military operations, it will be ranked with the celebrated Commentaries of Cæsar, whom Cortes resembled in many respects. The simple and graphic style in which he narrates actions which

have commanded the admiration of the whole world, and events in which the whole world was interested, will forcibly strike every reader. To the authenticity of history it superadds all the charms of the most glowing romance. Mr. Folsom has executed his task in a manner which reflects the highest honour on his ability, judgment, and taste.

Mr. John Pennington, of this city, has published "Footprints, or Fugitive Poems," by an anonymous author. It consists of a collection of fugitive poetry, which has been published in the Banner of the Cross, and elsewhere, and received with great favour. It is very beautifully printed, and will make an acceptable present to the lovers of good poetry.

Messrs. Thomas, Cowperthwait & Co., have published a new and very beautiful edition of Johnston's "Manual of Chemistry," on the basis of Turner. Our first chemists in this city have spoken in the highest terms of this work as a practical manual and text-book for classes.

The Messrs. Appleton have published "The Rose for 1814," a beautiful annual, with ten steel plates, and rich literary contributions from eminent writers. The style of binding of this book is very gorgeous. It will make a golden gift in more respects than one.

OUR NOVEMBER NUMBER

is rich in illustrations. First we have an Engraving of a beautiful female, from an original picture by that gifted artist, Connarroe, engraved in W. H. Ellis's best style. Next "The Runaway Match," by Geo. B. Ellis, printed in three colours,-something entirely new. Then the Plate of Fashions,

IN ADVANCE OF ALL OTHER MAGAZINES, and the only publication that contains Cloaks for the present and coming season, coloured, as can only be done by the Lady's Book. In this, as well as other branches of the fine arts, we certainly by far exceed all cotemporaries. Two Engravings on wood, "Going to Market," and "Market Gossip;" and five Engravings of Ancient Fashions: in all

TEN EMBELLISHMENTS. The DECEMBER NUMBER will contain the greatest novelty ever yet offered in a Magazine,

THIRTY-ONE COLOURED EMBOSSED

MEDALLION SEALS,

with every variety of design, and with beautiful and appropriate Mottoes,

ready for immediate use. These cannot be had separately for less than seventy-five cents. They are offered by the publisher as a holiday present to his fair patrons. This has never before been attempted in a Magazine, and is only another instance of what may be effected by good taste and an expensive outlay of capital. The French, who embrace almost every novelty in their various works of fancy, have not yet hit upon this idea of offering to the fair sex in remote places the luxuries and elegances of the larger cities; besides this we shall give our usual plates, and two beautiful steel engravings by Dick, illustrated by Epes Sargent, and H. W. Herbert. There will also be several other engravings of different kinds.

We copy the following remark from Miss Howitt's preface to the English edition of Miss Bremer's new novel of the President's Daughter. It precisely suits this meridian:

"Why do not numbers of that large class who live upon other people's ideas ever think of including in their prayers a petition for an idea of their own, especially as so many palpable and profitable fields still lie unoccupied?"

CHIT CHAT OF FASHIONS.

Pardessus. At the present moment this most useful appendage to a lady's out-door costuine, is more than ever in request; our uncertain climate requiring something of this description to guard against the sudden chills and cold winds that come on so unexpectedly, particularly at

this time of the year, (October) They are generally worn composed of a silk material, trimmed with broad folds, or an open-worked trimming. The most elegant, however, are in muslin, lined with a straw or lilac taffeta, and encircled with rich descriptions of laces. The sleeves descend midway over the arm, and are very broad; they are also attached round the waist with a ribbon, and are particularly adapted for being worn over dresses with plain corsages. This style of pelisse, although not so generally adopted as Mantelets, are nevertheless considered more elegant.

Mantillas of all materials, handsomely lined, still retain their favour.

Bonnets. Crepe bonnets with shaded ribbons are now much worn; that is to say that the ribbon trimmings, of the same colour as the bonnet, commence with the dark. est tint, and finish with the lightest shade. Some very elegant hats in paille de riz have also lately appeared; the ribbons being dark shaded verdant green, or in pink, in imitation of a shaded rose, commencing with the lightest tint, and ending in the China rose colour. Others are composed of fulled white tulle, simply decorated with a branch of a light foliage. Several of pailles de riz have lately been seen, the form of them being a demi capote, rather open at the ears, allowing of the under tufts of shaded gauze ribbons being seen, these ribbons having a lighter and more novel effect than flowers; this style is also well adapted for feathers.

Descriptions of the dresses worn by the Queen of England and the ladies of her Court at the late Drawing Room reception.

Her Majesty wore a pale pink satin train, brocaded with silver, trimmed with bouquets of blush roses and lined with white satin; the body and sleeves ornamented with diamonds and silver blonde; the petticoat of rich white satin, trimmed with roses and silver blonde to correspond with the train. Head-dress, feathers and diamonds. The Duchess of Kent wore a court dress, composed of a rich straw-coloured and silver moire, of British manufacture, lined with white satin, and trimmed with Brussels lace and ribbon; body and sleeves ornamented with bouquets of diamonds. Dress of the same manufacture, with a white satin tablier, covered with Brussels lace, fastened with bouquets of violet, auriculas, and diamonds. Head-dress, plume of feathers, Brussels lappets, and diamonds. The Duchess of Gloucester wore a costume de cour composed of a rich white satin train, elegantly trimmed with gold blonde and passementerie to match, with gold ribbon a la vielle; body and sleeves of the same, ornamented with a rich berthe of passementerie and precious stones; skirt of rich white satin, trimmed with flounces of gold blonde, and intermixed with precious stones and gold blonde on each side, and round the skirt. Coiffure of ostrich feathers and a profusion of diamonds, &c.; lappets of gold blonde.

Cloaks. The prevailing material for cloaks is velvet, the colour to suit the fancy; they are made according to the taste of the wearer. Our plate shows three different styles. The first is a mantle cloak, richly embossed and trimmed, with a broad lace-this is a very convenient garment, as it can be thrown off or resumed without the least trouble. The second is confined at the waist, and two bands on the back-a cord and rich tassels are in front; this cloak sits neatly into the form, and has all the gracefulness of a well made dress. The third cloak (or figure) has a plain back, fitting tight to the waist, the skirt very full, and richly embroidered in silk; hanging sleeves; the collar is round, and trimmed to match the skirt.

The third figure has on a very rich fur cardinal cape, and muff to match. Furs will be very much worn this winter.

For Bonnets there is no especial colour. Every variety of shade commencing at the lightest and ending with the darkest may be found in the same store. Feathers and ribbons the same.

Mr. Mahan has sent us a sheet of Fall Fashions for gentlemen; they are very beautiful, and we are told that they may be relied upon as the ton.