The question of complexion was seriously studied, the colour of the chin and cheeks being carefully suited to the gowns. Patches were lavishly indulged in in England and France, the eyebrows were blacked and even false, and China, Spain, and Portugal all contributed--for a consideration--rouges and white lead and wash balls, scented lard and lip salves, and toilet waters and soaps. The fan was an indispensable complement to every gown, and its best conduct was an art which might well have been added to the scholastic curriculum for women, always supposing the like in existence. The fans were made of chicken skin and painted; and chicken skin also had the privilege, with lace and an embroidery of gold and silver, in making gloves and mittens for evening wear. Tight-lacing was _de rigueur_, and it is indeed impossible to imagine any discomfort omitted from the toilet. I cannot picture conditions more entirely unpleasant than to glaze the face with paint and grease of red and black, to decorate it at intervals with devices of sticking plaster, to supply it with false eyebrows, and to mount on the head some pounds' weight of stuffed hair, while reducing the waist at least three inches below the natural size, expanding the hips with whalebone and hoops, compressing the feet into narrow shoes, and carefully studying every movement of the arm so as to hold a fan at a significant and becoming angle. And to add to all this, the dresses were of the stiffest brocades, decked with gold and silver embroideries and tinselled fringes, velvet and fur increasing the burden. [Illustration: SOME STICKS.] The excessive elaboration of the hoods and the scarves and the aprons dangling with silver tassels and fringes was responsible for some criticism from Beau Nash, the autocrat of Bath, where he had established the strictest rules of dress and procedure, covering all delinquencies of conduct with a bearing of convincing dignity set in an atmosphere of punctilious etiquette. Goldsmith gives an instance of the despotic rule of Nash, and of the special liberties he arrogated to himself. "I have known him on a ball-night strip even the Duchess of Q." (the "Kitty beautiful," as the poet Prior called this Duchess of Queensberry), "and throw her apron at one of the hinder benches among the ladies' women, observing that none but Abigails appeared in white aprons." Women had indeed to suffer in those days to attain what they were pleased to call the beautiful, and it is quite a relief to remember the moment when Marie Antoinette took a sudden caprice to appear without hoops in a soft satin gown with wide sleeves, which set the fashion in London as well as in France. For a short time only, however, such moderation ruled, and the hoops came back larger than ever in 1784, when the Duchess of Cumberland swept the floor in five yards of brocade, and a stomacher blazing stiffly with jewels.