At a recent conversazione of the London Literary and Artistic Society, Mr. Sellon read a paper upon this subject. Having expressed his belief that mere considerations of health would never dethrone fashion, the lecturer said he should endeavor to show on art principles how those who were open to conviction could have all the variety Fashion promised, together with far greater elegance than that goddess could bestow, while health received the fullest attention. Two excellent societies, worthy of encouragement up to a certain point, had been showing us the folly and wickedness of fashionable dress--dress which deformed the body, crippled the feet, confined the waist, exposed the chest, loaded the limbs, and even enslaved the understanding. But these societies had been more successful in pulling down than in building up, and blinded with excess of zeal were hurrying us onward to a goal which might or might not be the acme of sanitative dress, but was certainly the zero of artistic excellence. The cause of this was not far to seek. We were inventing a new science, that of dress, and were without rules to guide us. So long as ladies had to choose between Paris fashions and those of Piccadilly Hall, they would, he felt sure, choose the former. Let it be shown that the substitute was both sanitary and beautiful, capable of an infinite variety in color and in form--in colors and forms which never violated art principle, and in which the wearer, and not some Paris liner, could exercise her taste, and the day would have been gained. This was the task he had set himself to formulate, and so doing he should divide his subject in two--Color and Form. In color it was desirable to distinguish carefully between the meaning of shade, tint, and hue. It was amazing that a cultured nation like the English should be so generally ignorant of the laws of color harmony. We were nicely critical of music, yet in color were constantly committing the gravest solecisms. He did not think there were seventeen interiors in London that the educated eye could wander over without pain. Yet what knowledge was so useful? We were not competent to buy a picture, choose a dress, or furnish a house without a knowledge of color harmony, to say nothing of the facility such knowledge gave in all kinds of painting on porcelain, art needlework, and a hundred occupations. An important consideration in choosing colors for dress was the effect they would have in juxtaposition. Primary colors should be worn in dark shades; dark red and dark yellow, or as it was commonly called, olive green, went well together; but a dress of full red or yellow would be painful to behold. The rule for full primaries was, employ them sparingly, and contrast them only with black or gray. He might notice in passing that when people dressed in gray or black the entire dress was usually of the one color unrelieved. Yet here they had a background that would lend beauty to any color placed upon it.