“A sweet disorder in the dress, Kindles in clothes a playfulness. A lawn about the shoulder thrown Into a fine distraction; An erring lace, which here and there Inthrals the crimson stomacher; A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribbons to flow confusedly; A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat; A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility; Do more bewitch me, than when art Is too precise in every part.” Herrick was exquisitely taken by the “liquefaction,” as he calls it, of his Julia’s robes, and his very heart was rumpled by their “glittering vibration.” He dresses her in the airy fashion which Moore followed when called upon to deck his Nora Creina:— “The airy robe I did behold, As airy as the leaves of gold, Which erring here and wandering there, Pleased with transgression ev’rywhere: Sometimes ’twould pant, and sigh, and heave, As if to stir it scarce had leave; But having got it, thereupon ’Twould make a brave expansion, And pounced with stars, it show’d to me Like a celestial canopy.” Göthe, that lover of many ladies, never decks one wholly, but now and then he makes a gift interpreting his taste, as when Lamon remarks, in the ‘Laune des Verliebten’:— “Die Rose seh’ ich gern in einem schwarzen Haar.” The French poets put all their swains in tight gloves and loose principles; and their nymphs are as anxious about their dress, as though there were _soirées_ in Tempe, and a _Longchamps_ in Arcadia. Thus Chénier’s Naïs bids Daphnis not to crease her veil, and, with a shrewd idea of the cost of a new frock, how snappishly does the pretty thing reply to the invitation to recline on the shady bank:— “Vois, cet humide gazon Va souiller ma tunique!” How pure, compared or not compared with this calculating nymph, is the Madeline of Endymion Keats. The English poet undresses his young maiden with a “niceness” that gives us as much right to look as Porphyro:— “Her vespers done, Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees; Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one; Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees: Half-hidden, like a mermaid in seaweed, Pensive awhile, she dreams awake.” It is clear that this lady, although belonging to a more artificial society than Naïs, thinks less of her dress, and more of her principles. Not but that ladies have a fine eye for the snares by which they may either catch or be caught. There is something in the following, from an old Spanish ballad (‘A aquel caballero, madre’), which proves what I say, and may be useful to gentlemen when contemplating the subject of costume:— To that cavalier, dear mother, When a child, I simply told How three kisses I would owe him: I must pay them, now I’m old!