Now it is absolutely impossible to meet with any “unadorned” sort of beauty in those circles of rank and fashion where the society paragraphist basks at his or her pleasure. On the contrary, there is so much over-adornment in vogue that it is sometimes difficult to find the actual true colour and personality of certain ladies whose charms are daily eulogized by an obliging press. Layers of pearl enamel picked out with rouge, entirely conceal their human identity. It is doubtful whether there was ever more face-painting and “faking up” of beauty than there is now,--never did beauty specialists and beauty doctors drive such a roaring trade. The profits of beauty-faking are enormous. Some idea of it may be gained by the fact that there is a certain shrewd and highly intelligent “doctor” in Paris, who, seeing which way the wind of fashion blows, brews a harmless little mixture of rose-water, eau-de-cologne, tincture of benzoin and cochineal, which materials are quite the reverse of costly, and calling it by a pretty _sobriquet_, sells the same at twenty-five shillings a bottle! He is making a fortune out of women’s stupidity, is this good “doctor,” and who shall blame him? Fools exist merely that the wise may use them. One has only to read the ladies’ papers, especially the advertisements therein, to grasp a faint notion of what is being done to spur on the “beauty” craze. Yet beauty remains as rare and remote as ever, and often when we see some of the ladies whose “exquisite loveliness” has been praised for years in nearly every newspaper on this, or the other side of the Atlantic, we fall back dismayed, with a sense of the deepest disappointment and aggravation, and wonder what we have done to be so deceived?