But, for all the pother anent divided skirts, they did not catch on; and a newer rival, another variety of ‘Rational Dress,’ now rules the field, the camp, the grove, but more especially the road. For the popular and widespread pastime of cycling has given this newest craze a very much better chance than ever the Bloomer heresy or the original Divided Skirt frenzy obtained; and it is not too much to say that, if the cycle had not been so democratic a plaything, this latest experiment in dress reform would have been but little heard of. Rational Dress, as seen on the flying females who pedal down the roads to-day, is only Bloomerism with a difference. That is to say, the legs are clothed in roomy knickerbockers down to the knees, and encased in cloth gaiters for the rest, buttoned down to the ankles. These in place of the Turk-like trousers, tied round the ankles and finished off with frills, of over forty years ago. As for the attenuated skirts of the Prophet Bloomer, Rational Dress replaces them with a species of frantic frock-coat, spreading as to its ample skirts, but tightened round the waist. A ‘Robin Hood’ hat, even as in the bygone years, crowns this confection; and, really, the parallels between old-time schismatics and the modern revolting daughters are wonderfully close. Everything recurs in this world in cycles of longer or shorter duration. The whirligig of time may be uncertain in its revolutions, but it performs the allotted round at last; and so surely as yesterday’s sun will reappear to-morrow, as certainly will the crinolines, the chignons, and the Bloomer vagaries of yester-year recur. You may call the recurrent fashions by newer names, but, by any name they take, they remain practically the same. The farthingale of Queen Bess’s time is the crinoline of the Middle Victorian period, and ‘came in’ once more as the ‘full skirt’ of some seasons since. The chignon is resurrected as the ‘Brighton Bun,’ and is as objectionable in its reincarnation as it was in its previous existence; and we have already seen that Rational Dress, Divided Skirts, and the Bloomer costume are but different titles for one fad. The very latest development is not pretty: but there! ’tis ‘pretty Fanny’s way,’ and so an end to all discussion. III.--WOMAN IN ART, LITERATURE, POLITICS, AND SOCIAL POLITY.