Taken in the majority, the women of Great Britain are supposed to hold the palm of beauty against all other women of the nations of the world, and if the word “beauty” be changed to prettiness, the supposition is no doubt correct. It is somewhat unfortunate, however, that either through the advice of their dressmakers or their own erroneous conceptions of Form, they should appear to resent the soft outlines and gracious curves of nature, for either by the over-excess of their outdoor sports, or the undue compression of corsets, they are gradually doing away with their originally intended shapes and becoming as flat-chested as jockeys under training. No flat-chested woman is pretty. No woman with large hands, large feet, and the coarse muscular throat and jaw developed by constant bicycle-riding, can be called fascinating. The bony and resolute lady whose lines of figure run straight down without a curve anywhere from head to heel, may possibly be a good athlete, but her looks are by no means to her advantage. Men’s hearts are not enthralled or captured by a Something appearing to be neither man nor woman. And there are a great many of these Somethings about just now. I am ignorant as to whether American women go in for mannish sports as frequently and ardently as their British sisters, but I notice that they have daintier hands and feet, and less pronounced “muscle.” At the same time American women on an average, are not so pretty as British women on the same average. The American complexion is unfortunate. Often radiant and delicate in earliest youth, it fades with maturity like a brilliant flower scorched by too hot a sun, and once departed returns no more. The clear complexion of British women is their best feature. The natural rose and white skin of an English, Irish or Scottish girl,--especially a girl born and bred in the country, is wonderfully fresh and lovely and lasting, and often accompanies her right through her life to old age. That is, of course, if she leaves it alone, and is satisfied merely to keep it clean, without any “adornment” from the beauty doctor. And, though steadily withholding the divine word “beauty” from the greater portion of the “beauties” at the Court of King Edward VII. it is unquestionably the fact that the prettiest women in the world are the British. Americans are likely to contest this. They will, as indeed in true chivalry they must, declare that their own “beauties” are best. But one can only speak from personal experience, and I am bound to say that I have never seen a pretty American woman pretty enough to beat a pretty British woman. This, with every possible admission made for the hard-working society paragraphist, compelled to write of numerous “beautiful” Ladies So-and-So, and “charming” Mrs. Cashboxes, who, when one comes to look at them are neither “beautiful” nor “charming” at all.