Madame D’Arblay, in one of her most delightful letters, records a conversation between herself and Mr. Fairly (Col. Stephen Digby), who, upon the occasion of a visit to her, ‘finding she entered into nothing,’ took up a fan which lay on the table and began playing off various imitative airs with it, exclaiming, ‘How thoroughly useless a toy!’ ‘“No,” I said, “on the contrary, taken as an ornament, it was the most useful of any belonging to full dress; occupying the hands, giving the eyes something to look at, and taking away stiffness and formality from the figure and deportment.” ‘“Men have no fans,” cried he, “and how do they do?” ‘“Worse,” quoth I plumply. * * * * * ‘“But the real use of the fan,” cried he, “if there is any, is it not—to hide a particular blush that ought not to appear?” ‘“Oh no, it would rather make it the sooner noticed.” ‘“Not at all; it may be done under pretence of absence—rubbing the cheek, or nose—putting it up accidentally to the eye—in a thousand ways.”’ The uses of the Fan? They are legion!—They record for us public events, military, political, civil; they tell us our fortunes; instruct us in Botany, in Heraldry, in tricks with cards; they propound conundrums; take us to the theatre, to bull-fights, to church, to the first balloon ascent; and to Mr. Thomas Osborne’s Duck-hunting! In Shakespeare’s day no lady thought of stirring abroad without this accompaniment, the care of the toy devolving upon the gentleman usher— ‘Peter, take my fan and go before.’ _Romeo and Juliet._ From the Aubrey MS., 1678, we learn that ‘the gentlemen (_temp._ Henry VIII.) had prodigious fans, as is to be seen in old pictures,[7] like that instrument which is used to drive feathers, and in it a handle at least half a yard long; with these the daughters were oftentimes corrected (Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief-Justice, rode the circuit with such a fan; Sir William Dugdale told me he was an eye-witness of it;[8] the Earl of Manchester also used such a fan); but fathers and mothers slasht their daughters in the time of their besom discipline when they were perfect women.’[9] [Illustration: La Danse, after Lancret. Dr Law Adam] Hotspur’s exclamation, I _Henry IV._, II. iii., further serves to show that this instrument could, upon occasion, be used as an offensive weapon: ‘Zounds! an I were now by this rascal, I could brain him with his lady’s fan.’ The strength hidden in such an apparently harmless toy is thus recognised equally by both sterner and gentler sex: the hint contained in the quaint and charming conceit addressed to the fan of his mistress by Louis de Boissey, author of _Le Babillard_, will not be lost upon lovers: ‘Deviens le protecteur de ma vive tendresse, Bel éventail! je te remets mes droits; Et si quelque rival avait la hardiesse D’approcher de trop près du sein de ma maîtresse, Bel éventail: donne-lui sur les doigts!’