assailed as inartistic or immoral; while fashions at once disgusting, indecent, destructive to life and health, and degrading to womanhood have been readily sanctioned by conventionalism. This antagonistic attitude toward any movement for an improvement in woman's attire founded on the laws of health, art, comfort, and common sense was characteristically expressed in a recent editorial in a leading Boston daily, wherein the writer solemnly observed: The simple truth is, the great majority of the women _appreciate the fact that it is their mission to be beautiful_, and the dress reformers have never yet devised any garment to assist the women in fulfilling this mission. [Illustration: From 1860 to 1865. The era of hoop-skirts.] [Illustration: From 1860 to 1865. The hoop-skirt era. The difficult feat of tying on a bonnet.] The author of the above fairly represents the attitude of conventional thought,--its servility to fashion, its antagonism to reformative moves. The implied falsehood that fashion represents beauty and art, or is the servant of aestheticism has been reiterated so often that thousands have accepted it as truth. [Illustration: 1870 to 1875. The era of the enormous bustle and train of sweeping dimensions.] [Illustration: 1870 to 1875. The era of the enormous bustle and train of sweeping dimensions.] In order to expose its falsity, I have reproduced in this paper plates taken from leading American and English fashion monthlies during the past three decades, in each of which it is noticeable that extremes have been reached. In 1860-65, the hoop-skirt held sway, and the wasp waist was typical of beauty. Then no lady was correctly attired according to the prevailing idea who did not present a spectacle curiously suggestive of a moving circus tent. During this era four or five fashionably dressed women completely filled an ordinary drawing-room; while the sidewalk was often practically monopolized by moving monstrosities, save when in front or behind the formidable swinging cages moved escorts, who with no less servility than American womanhood bowed to the frivolous and criminal caprice of the modern Babylon. But fashion is nothing if not changeable; fancy not art guides her mind. What to-day types beauty, is by her own voice to-morrow voted indecent and absurd. Thus we find in the period extending from 1870 to 1875 an entirely new but none the less ridiculous or injurious extreme prevails. The wonderful swinging cage, the diameter of which at the base often equaled the height of the encased figure, has disappeared, being no longer considered desirable or aesthetic, and in its place we have prodigious bustles and immense trains, by which an astonishing quantity of material is thrown behind the body, suggesting in some instances a toboggan slide, in others the unseemly hump on the back of a camel. This is the era of the enormous bustle and the train of sweeping dimensions.[1]