Moreover, there is a charm and piquancy of manner quite apart from the dress itself, or even the personal beauty of the wearer, which distinguishes the fascinating woman. A character in "The Belle's Stratagem" exclaims--with what degree of truth the reader himself must determine: "Pho! thou hast no taste! English beauty! 'tis insipidity: it wants the zest, it wants poignancy, Frank! Why, I have known a Frenchwoman, indebted to Nature for no one thing but a pair of decent eyes, reckon in her suit as many counts, marquisses, and petits maîtres, as would satisfy three dozen of our first-rate toasts. I have known an Italian marquizina make ten conquests in stepping from her carriage, and carry her slaves from one city to another, whose real intrinsic beauty would have yielded to half the little grisettes that pace your Mall on a Sunday." [Illustration: PARIS EVENING DRESS, 1833.] FOOTNOTES: [13] The term "spencer" is a modern one, and is said to originate from an accident to Lord Spencer, in which he lost his coat-tails during a hunt, _temp._ George III. [14] "This day I did first see the Duke of York's room of pictures of some Maids of Honour, done by Lilly; good, but not like."--_Pepys's Diary._ [15] Carlyle. VI THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CRINOLINE "For I will goe frocked and in a French hood, I will have my fine cassockes and my round verdingale." _Booke of Robin Conscience._ [Illustration: THE CRINOLINE. _From Jacquemin._] VI THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CRINOLINE Fielding, in his description of the beauty and many graces of Sophia Western, feeling his subject to be more than ordinarily sublime, introduces his heroine "with the utmost solemnity, with an elevation of style, and all the other circumstances proper to raise the veneration of the reader": "Hushed be every ruder breath. May the heathen ruler of the winds confine in iron chains the boisterous limbs of noisy Boreas, and the sharp-pointed nose of bitter-biting Eurus. Do thou, sweet Zephyrus, rising from thy fragrant bed, mount the western sky and lead on those delicious gales, the charms of which call forth the lovely Flora from her chamber, perfumed with pearly dews, when on the first of June, her birthday, the blooming maid, in loose attire, gently trips it over the verdant mead, where every flower rises to do her homage, until the whole field becomes enamelled, and colours contend with sweets which shall ravish her most. "So charming may she now appear; and you, the feathered choristers of nature, whose sweetest notes not even Handel can excel, tune your melodious throats to celebrate her appearance. _From love proceeds your music, and to love it returns._ Awake, therefore," &c. If one were fortunate enough to possess the power of description and imagination of a Fielding, methinks the crinoline would provide a sufficiently inspiring theme.