Literature must have on it the brand of Fashion, and even education must receive the crown stamp of this graceless monarch, or be rejected by the world and receive no diploma at its hands. It is true that the rule of Fashion is almost omnific. To be out of Fashion is to be a mark for the cold finger of scorn from its votaries, and set up as a target for the shafts of their ridicule. So true is this, that it has become a common saying, that "one may as well be out of the world as out of the Fashion!" Yet what is Fashion, what does it amount to? Is one really more respected, more beloved, more received into the arms of the good, more caressed by the worthy, for being fashionable? We think not. The best and most beloved men and women that have ever lived have been far from the votaries of Fashion. They have lived with little thought and little conformity to the demands of this prince of weak minds. They have rather asked what was right, what was best, than what was fashionable. Conformity to Fashion tends rather to disgust than respect. Deep down in the hearts of all people there is a sense of the hollowness of Fashion, and a just loathing of its pretension and show. Even its votaries secretly despise it, and obey its dictates only because they think they must. They know its baseness better than we can tell them. True, they do not fully realize its sinfulness nor wholly appreciate its evils. But its hollowness and falseness they feel at times most keenly. Else why their perpetual unrest, their longing, dissatisfied condition of mind? Oh, if we could pull off the false glitter that lays like a gorgeous mantle over the fashionable world, we should see such an aching void, such a palpitating heart of woe, as would make the very stones cry out for sympathy. Look at a fashionable woman--one woman, a poor, weak mortal, apprenticed to earth to learn the work of the skies, pupiled here to be schooled in the great lessons of beauty and goodness written on all the outward universe and taught by the constant voice of God in the soul in its best experiences; see such a woman fretting herself well-nigh to death in chasing the butterfly delusions of Fashion, seeing them fade in her hands as fast as she grasps them, starving her soul and dwarfing her mind in the pursuit of such phantoms, enfeebling her body, irritating her nerves, breaking down her constitution, fading in early womanhood, and dying ere her years are half lived; what object is more sorrowful and has higher claims upon our pity? We think it sad when a woman is thus crushed by neglect or abuse, by the hand of poverty, by hard toil, or the harder fate of a consuming death at the hands of a false or brutal companion. But really, why is it sadder than to die by inches on the guillotine of Fashion? The results are the same in either case. Abused women generally outlive fashionable ones. Crushed and care-worn women see the pampered daughters of Fashion wither and die