This statement, so inconsistently published by our once, and, we hitherto supposed, our still fashionable contemporary, is calculated to have a most unfashionable effect, namely, that of deterring girls from following the revived fashion of lacing as tight as they can stand, and tighter than they are sometimes able to go. But a propensity, which seems a law of their nature, happily compels them, for the most part, to follow the fashion regardless of consequences. The typical and average woman can no more deviate from the dress of the day than an animal can choose to change its skin or its spots. There is no fear that any girls accustomed to tight-lacing will ever be induced to relinquish that practice which renders them such delightful objects to one another, if ridiculous and repulsive to stupid men, by any such nonsense as a report of the verdict of a coroner's jury ascribing death to the effect of tight-lacing in accelerating fatty degeneration of the heart. [Illustration: THE GRECIAN BEND Does not tight-lacing and high heels give a charming grace and dignity to the female figure?] [Sidenote: _The Grecian Bend_] High heels are not noticeable in Leech's pictures or before the middle 'sixties. The "manly style" of boots mentioned in the lines of the "Young Lady of Fashion" quoted above probably refer to the stout laced-up "Balmorals" which Frederick Locker refers to in his _London Lyrics_. The advent of tailor-made garments for women in the summer of 1864 is looked upon as a curiosity. Towards the end of the period under review a mode of carriage known as the "Grecian Bend," celebrated in a comic song of the time, is more than once noted and caricatured in _Punch_; faint echoes of the "Grecian Bend" still linger in the memories of the elderly; the "Roman Fall" is merely the shadow of a name. By the 'seventies the æsthetic movement had already begun to exert an influence on dress, but it was confined to a small coterie, to the _précieux_ and _précieuses_ who worshipped old china and wore waistless dresses of sage green. On the general question of "the Influence of costume and fashion on High Art," which was discussed in a manifesto issued by "The Artists of the Nineteenth Century," _Punch_ wrote sensibly enough:--