While we find that the pious Bishop Latimer remonstrated with the females of his time against the monstrous superfluity of their “roundabouts, artificial hips,” &c. &c. and recommended to their use the “honest _single_ garment;”--our moralists, equally pious, take up the argument on the contrary side, and justly condemn the too adhesive and transparent robe worn by our contemporary belles! On this subject we must dissent from the venerable reformer of the sixteenth century; and agree with those of the nineteenth, that the _single garment_ (as the texture now usually is) is not a meet covering for a christian damsel. I am sorry to be obliged to call to your observation, my gentle friends, that the modern fair have deviated widely from that medium between the Bacchante and the Vestal, which a discreet candidate for admiration would wish to preserve. The nature of man is prone to extremes; and flying from the heavy farthingale and the stuffed petticoat, women assume almost the Spartan guise; and, not meeting minds in the opposite sex as pure as those in Lacedæmon, no wonder that the chaste matron, called upon to foretell the consequence, should remain silent, and veil her head. “Good sense,” says La Rochefoucault, “should be the test of all rule, whether ancient or modern. Whatever is incompatible with good sense must be false.” Modesty should, on the same principle, be the test of the propriety of all personal apparel or ornament; for whatever is incompatible with her ordinances, must degrade and betray. Hence you will perceive, my young readers, that in no case a true friend or lover would wish you to discover to the eye more of the “form divine” than can be indistinctly descried through the mysterious involvements of, at least, three successive folds of drapery. Love, friendship, and real taste, are alike delicate. To the exposure of the bosom and back, as some ladies display those parts of their person, what shall we say? This mode (like every other which is carried to excess and indiscriminately followed) is not only repugnant to decency, but most exceedingly disadvantageous to the charms of nine women out of ten. The bosom and shoulders of a very young and fair girl may be displayed without exciting much displeasure or disgust; the beholder regards the too prodigal exhibition, not as the act of the youthful innocent, but as the effect of accident, or perhaps the designed exposure of some ignorant dresser. But when a woman, grown to the age of discretion, of her own choice “unveils her beauties to the sun and moon,” then, from even an Helen’s charms the sated eye turns away loathing.