of Beauty never lasted full Three Years, but it ended in Marriage, or Condemnation to Virginity.’[3] If the fan is efficacious as a weapon of offence in Love’s sieges, it is no less effective as a shield against Love’s darts. On a painted Spanish fan in the Schreiber Collection in the British Museum are represented three fair nymphs in a wooded landscape, one of whom is receiving on her fan an arrow discharged by the Love-God, who is accompanied by my lady Venus in her car. On a scroll is the inscription, ‘l’utilité des éventails,’ ‘la utilidad de los abanicos.’ This use of the fan as shield, is adopted also by the _shinláung_, or monastic novitiate of Burma, who employs his large palm-fan, both as a shelter from the fierceness of the sun’s rays, and as a screen from the sight of womankind, moving, in the latter instance, his fan from right to left as occasion requires, _i.e._ whenever a woman happens to pass. [Illustration: Epoch Louis XV. Fan Mount—Unfolded. Hommages offered at the Altar of Madame de Pompadour by Church and State,—Literature, Art, Music, Etc. Hommages Offered to Madame de Pompadour. Mrs Bruce Johnston.] A story, the source of which is not given,[4] is told of Goldoni, who, being one evening the guest of a Venetian lady, was complimented by her upon the productions of his genius. ‘Why, my lady,’ he replied, ‘_anything_ provides a subject for a comedy.’ ‘Anything?’ replied the lady. ‘Anything,’ emphatically replied the dramatist. ‘Even this fan?’ insisted the Beauty. ‘I shall be indebted to you for life,’ exclaimed Goldoni, struck with a happy thought. ‘You have suggested to me my best comedy; in a week you will read it.’[5] Many and manifold are the uses of the fan. What device, for example, could better display the beauty of a rounded arm, or the ivory whiteness of tapered fingers? Such an instrument provides graceful and often much-needed employment to those same delicate fingers; it supplies that necessary sense of completeness to the _tout ensemble_ of the picture. And the comedy actress, desiring some trifle to emphasise a movement, to give point and expression to some particular action—what more effective instrument than a fan, the use of which, on the stage, has almost been elevated into a fine art! ‘Pray, ladies, copy Abington; Observe the breeding in her air: There’s nothing of the actress there! Assume her fashion if you can And catch the graces of her fan.’ This at once recalls the saying of Northcote, who, although reluctantly compelled to admit Queen Charlotte’s excessive plainness, an elegant and not a vulgar plainness—she had a beautifully shaped arm, and was fond of exhibiting it—exclaimed, ‘She had a fan in her hand. Lord! how she held that fan!’[6]