We can understand now why English women over forty have shrunken gums; we can understand now why their poor teeth very sensibly protest against their superhuman task, and slant outwards, so as to get a little help from the gums in this gigantic work of mastication; we understand at last how it is that the eyes of most of the _habituées_ of Rotten Row seem to be starting from their sockets, and you need not smile, for your eyes would soon do the same, if your digestive apparatus were kept in perpetual movement of deglutition. It is a facial panic. The fact is that, in the fashionable promenade of Hyde Park, you see very few pretty women. With the exception of some children that certainly are lovely, the majority of the faces you see in the carriages are sulky and stupid-looking; they have lobster eyes that throw you an indifferent and half-dead glance: they are the faces of digesting boas in a comatose state, the faces of women who seem to have not a pleasure in life. No smiles, no little graceful gestures of recognition from one carriage to another: it is Madame Tussaud's exhibition out for an airing: a solemn and stupid procession. If you would refresh your eyes with the sight of pretty faces, young, rosy, plump and fresh,--if you would see them by the hundred, go and take a stroll, between nine and ten o'clock in the morning, in Regent Street, Oxford Street, New Bond Street, and Piccadilly. There you will see the prettiest national produce that John Bull has to show you. The finest specimens of Englishwomen are the assistants in the great drapery, bonnet and mantle shops. The English tradesmen of importance, who know their business, only employ women that are young, pretty, in face and figure, and well behaved; and the sight of these hundreds of independent, respectable, and well-mannered girls, going to their shops every morning, is one of the most refreshing and edifying to be seen in this immense city. I have many times accompanied ladies to bonnet shops in the West-end, where I have sometimes witnessed very amusing little scenes. I have seen young spinsters of thirty-nine summers, make a pretty shop girl put on all the hats in the shop, and then go to the glass and try them on one after another. The disappointed looks of these poor dears were quite diverting. It is a curious thing, they seemed to say to themselves, making a wry face the while, none of these hats suit me as they do that girl! And with what a mischievous, wicked little smile, those pretty milliners of twenty-five--that pitiless age--said: "Oh! that hat suits you so beautifully!" I admired the angelic patience with which they tried the whole stock of the shop upon those ugly heads. This occupation cannot fail to be often very amusing, and in the evening, on returning home, what funny stories they must have to tell each other!