Thus, in republican Washington, in glaring drawing-rooms, we are treated to a study of female anatomy, which is appalling. Don’t jump to the conclusion that I want every lady to go to a party in a stuff dress, drawn up to her ears; nor that I am so prudish as to think no dress can be modestly, as well as immodestly low. No matter how it be cut, the _way_ in which a dress is worn is more impressive than the dress itself. I have seen a young girl’s shoulders rise from her muslin frock as unconsciously and as innocently as the lilies in the garden; and I have come upon a wife and mother, in a public assembly, so dressed for promiscuous gaze that I have involuntarily shut my eyes with shame. I never saw Lydia Thompson; but from what I have heard of her, have come to the conclusion that her attire is just as modest as that of many ladies whom I meet at fashionable parties. They cast up their eyes in horror at the name of poor Lydia Thompson. _They_ go to see Lydia Thompson! No, indeed! How could their eyes endure the sight of that dreadful woman? No less they themselves offer gratis, to a promiscuous company, every evening, a sight, morally, quite as dreadful. The men, who pay their money to Lydia Thompson and her _troupe_, know that their dress and their burlesque, however questionable, make at once their business and their livelihood. They cannot make the same excuse for their wives, their sisters, and their sweethearts, if they see them scarcely less modestly attired in some fashionable ball-room. Remember this; if you ever find yourself in such a place, the best men in that room, at heart, are not delighted with such displays. Being men, they will look at whatever is presented to their gaze; more, many will compliment and flatter the very woman, whose vanity at heart they pity or despise; but it will always be with the mental reservation: “_My wife_ should never dress like that!” “I don’t want to see my sister dancing round dances for hours in the arms of a man whom even I cannot think of without horror; and if —— dances with him again, I’ll not go to another ‘German;’” said a young man to his mother, this very winter.