handsomest women I know the justice to say, that they keep the clearest from these extravagances. Delia's good sense appears even in her dress, which she neither studies nor neglects; but by a decent and modest conformity to the fashion, equally shuns the triumphant pageantry of an overbearing beauty, or the insolent negligence of a conscious one. As for those of an inferior rank of beauty, such as are only pretty women, and whose charms result rather from a certain air and "je ne scai quoi" in their whole composition, than from any dignity of figure, or symmetry of features; I allow them greater licences in their ornaments, because the subject, not being of the sublimest kind, may receive some advantages from the elegancy of style, and the variety of images. I therefore permit them to dress up to all the flights and fancies of the Sonnet, the Madrigal, and such like minor compositions. Flavia may serve for a model of this kind: her ornaments are her amusements, not her care: though she shines in all the gay and glittering images of dress, the prettiness of the subject warrants all the wantonness of the fancy; and if she owes them a lustre which (it may be) she would not have without them, she returns them graces they could find no where else. There is a third sort, who, with a perfect neutrality of face, are neither handsome nor ugly; and who have nothing to recommend them, but a certain smart and genteel turn of little figure, quick and lively. These I cannot indulge in a higher style than the Epigram, which should be neat, clever, and unadorned; the whole to lie in the sting-and where that lies is unnecessary to mention. Having thus gone through the important article of dress, with relation to the three classes, of my country-women who alone can be permitted to dress at all; viz. the handsome, the pretty, and the genteel; I must add, that this privilege is limited by common sense to a certain number of years, beyond which no woman can be any one of the three. I therefore require, that, when turned of thirty, they abate of the vigour of their dress; and that, when turned of forty, they utterly lay aside all thoughts of it. And as an inducement to them so to do, I do most solemnly assure them, that they may make themselves ridiculous, but never desirable, by it. When they are once arrived at the latitude of forty, the propitious gales are over; let them gain the first port, and lay aside their rigging. I come now to a melancholy subject, and upon which the freedom of my advice, I fear, will not be kindly taken; but as the cause of common sense is most highly concerned in it, I shall proceed without regard to the consequences. I mean the ugly, and (I am sorry to say it) so numerous a part of my country-women. I must, for their own sakes, treat them with some rigour, to save them not only from the public ridicule, but indignation. Their dress must not rise above plain humble Prose; and any attempts beyond it, amount at best to the MockHeroic, and excite laughter. An ugly woman should by all means avoid any ornament that may draw eyes upon her, which she will entertain so ill. But if she endeavours by dint of dress to cram her deformity down mankind, the insolence of the undertaking is resented; and when a gorgon curls her snakes to charm the town, she would have no reason to complain, if she lost head and all by the hand of some avenging Perseus. Ugly women (who may more properly be called a third sex, than a part of the fair one) should publicly renounce all thoughts of their persons, and turn their minds another way they should endeavour to be honest, good-humoured gentlemen; they may amuse themselves with field sports, and a cheerful glass; and if they could get into parliament, I should, for my own part, have no objection to it. Should I be asked how a woman should know she is ugly, and take her measures accordingly; I answer, that in order to judge right, she must not believe her eyes, but her ears; and if they have not heard very warm addresses and applications, she may depend upon it, it was the deformity and not the severity of her countenance that prevented them. There is another sort of ladies, whose daily insults upon common sense call for the strongest correction, and who may most properly be styled, old offenders. These are the sexagenary fairones, and upwards, who, whether they were handsome or not in the last century, ought at least, in this, to reduce themselves to a decency and gravity of dress suited to their years. These offenders are exceedingly numerous, witness all the public places, where they exhibit whatever art and dress can do to make them completely ridiculous. I have often observed septuagenary great-grandmothers, adorned, as they thought, with all the colours of the rainbow, while in reality they looked more like decayed worms in the midst of their own silks. Nay, I have seen them proudly display withered necks, shrivelled and decayed like their marriage settlements, and which no hand but the cold hand of time had visited these forty years. The utmost indulgence I can allow here is extreme cleanliness, that they may not offend more senses than the sight; but for the dress, it must be confined to the Elegy and the Tristibus. What has been said with relation to the fair sex, holds true with relation to the other; only with still greater restrictions; as such irregularities are less pardonable in men than in ladies. A reasonable compliance with the fashion is no disparagement to the best understanding, and an affected singularity would; but an excess beyond what age, rank, and character will justify, is one of the worst signs the body can hang out, and will never tempt people to call in. I see with indulgence the youth of our nation finely bound and gilt on the back, and wish they were lettered into the bargain. I forgive them the unnatural scantiness of their wigs, and the immoderate dimensions of their bags, in consideration that the fashion has prevailed, and that the opposition of a few to it would be the greater affectation of the two. Though, by the way, very much doubt whether they are all of them gainers by shewing their ears; for it is said that Midas, after a certain accident, was the judicious inventor of long wigs. But then these luxuriancies of fancy must subside, when age and I |