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Rh of your charms upon a wide-spreading bot­tom to the last."

Bravo! that fellow speaks so well that we will not hear the other. Of course he said the hoops were ugly—unsightly; that they knocked over everything about the house, set their wearers on fire, and often tipped up so high as to show how the wearer's garters were tied, besides inconveniently filling a small room, a coach, or the family pew at church. But who ever hearkens to such stuff as that when a thing is in fashion?

Say what you will, there is great virtue in good clothes, as every one must have felt in wearing them. None but a cynic like that old snarler Diogenes would ever deny it. Ben Jonson has put the matter admirably; he says, "Rich apparel has strange virtues; it makes him that hath it without means esteemed for an excellent wit; he that enjoys it with means puts the world in remembrance of his means; it helps the deformities of Nature, gives lustre to her beauties, and makes continual holiday where it shines." To the above we may add an ex­tract from the gifted authoress of the Chronicles of Fashion. "Dress—well-selected dress—is to beauty what harmony is to melody—a most beguiling ac­complishment, or rather an exquisite illustration;