fectation of it; they both defeat their own purposes, and are in the case of the yaletudinarian, who creates or increases his distempers by his remedies, and dies of his immoderate desire to live.

FEMALE DRESS.

The Romans used to say, ex pede Herculem, or, you may know Hercules by his foot, intimating that one may commonly judge of the whole by a part. I confess, I am myself very apt to judge in this manner, and may, without pretending to an uncommon share of sagacity, say, that I have very seldom found myself mistaken in it. It is impossible not to form to one's self some opinion of people, the first time one sées them, from their air and dress; and a suit of clothes has often informed me, with the utmost certainty, that the wearer had not common sense. The Greeks (to display my learning) said iuariov avng, or, the dress shows the man; and it is certain that, of all trifling things, there is none by which people so much discover their natural turn of mind as by their dress. In greater matters they proceed more cautiously; nature is disguised, and weaknesses are concealed by art or imitation; but in dress they give a loose to their fancy, and by declaring it an immaterial thing, though at the same time they do not think it so, promise themselves at least impunity, in their greatest odnesses and

wildest excesses. I shall, therefore, in this paper, consider the subject of dress, by certain plain rules of common sense, which I shall strictly charge and require all persons to ob

serve.

As dress is more immediately the province, not to say the pleasure, not to say the whole study, of the fair sex, I make my first application to them; and I humbly beg their indulgence, if the rules I shall lay down should prove a little contrary to those they have hitherto practised. There is a proper dress for every rank, age, and figure, which those who deviate from are guilty of petty treason against common sense; to prevent which crime for the future, I have some thoughts of disposing, in proper parts of the town, a certain number of babies in the statutable dress, for each rank, age, and figure, which, like the 25th of Edward III. shall reduce that matter to a precision.

Dress, to be sensible, must be properly adapted to the person, as, in writing, the style must be suited to the subject, which image may not unaptly be carried on through the several branches of it. I am far from objecting to the magnificence of apparel, in those whose rank and fortune justify and allow it; on the contrary, it is a useful piece of luxury, by which the poor and industrious are enabled to live, at the expense of the rich and the idle. I would no more have a woman of quality dressed in doggerel, than a farmer's wife in he

roics. But I hereby notify to the profuse wives of industrious tradesmen and honest yeomen, that all they get by dressing above themselves is the envy and hatred of their inferiors and their equals, with the contempt and ridicule of their superiors.

To those of the first rank in birth and beauty, I recommend a noble simplicity of dress; the subject supports itself, and wants none of the borrowed helps of external ornaments. Beautiful nature may be disfigured, but cannot be improved, by art; and as I look upon a very handsome woman to be the finest subject in nature, her dress ought to be epic, modest, noble, and entirely free from the modern tinsel. I therefore prohibit all concetti, and luxuriances of fancy, which only depreciate so noble a subject; and I must do the 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 bea" y, such as are only pretty women, and whose charms result rather from a certain air and je ne sais quoi in their whole composition, than from any dignity of figure, or symmetry of features, I allow them greater licenses in their

own ornaments, because their 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 amusement, 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 to them a lustre, which, it may be, she would not have without them, she returns them graces they could find nowhere 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 countrywomen, 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 there

fore 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 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 countrywomen: 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 mock heroic, 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 curles 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