Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/112

Rh to seventy, and Heaven knows how much longer, leave their necks and arms bare; not here and there one, "blinded, deluded, and misguided," but whole assemblies of fat women—and, tempora! O mores!—and lean. Such parchment necks as I have seen bedizzened with diamonds, and arms bared, that seemed only fit to hold the scissors of destiny, or to stir the caldron of Macbeth's witches. —— dresses in azure satins and rose-coloured silks, and bares her arms as if they were as round and dimpled as a cherub's, though they are mere bunches of sinews, that seem only kept together by that nice anatomical contrivance of the wristband on which Paley expatiates. The post-mortem demonstration is perhaps after all, an act of penance for past vanities, or perhaps it is a benevolent admonition to the young and fair, that to this favour they must come at last! Who knows?

The entire absence of what seems to us fitness for the season may in part result from the climate. In June and July, you know, we have all our dark and bright colours, and rich stuffs—everything that can elicit the idea of warmth, laid aside; here we see every day velvets and boas, and purple, orange, and cherry silks and satins. Cherry, indeed, is the prevailing colour; cherry feathers the