Vile as these meretricious arts are, they are not less dangerous to health than to morals. The constant pressure of such hard substances as whalebone, steel, &c. upon so susceptible a part as the bosom, is very likely, in the course of a very short time, to produce all the horrid consequences of abscesses, cancers, &c.: on their miseries I need not to descant. On the _long stay_ I shall now make a few remarks, arising from the observations I have been enabled to make on the ladies of various ages and figures whom I have known wear it. To the woman whose waning charms set in an exuberance of flesh, perhaps the support of this adventitious aid is an advantage. But in that case its stiffening should rather be cord quilted in the lining, or very thin whalebone, than either steel or iron. In all situations, the boddice should be flexible to the motion of the body and the undulations in the shape; and it should never be _felt_ to _press_ upon any part. Thus far we may tolerate the adoption of this buckram suit for elderly, or excessively _embonpoint_ ladies; but for the _growing_ girl (whom, I am sorry to say, mothers not unfrequently imprison in these machines,) it is both unrequired and mischievous. Before nature has completed her work in the perfection of the youthful figure, she is checked in her progress by the impediment which the valves, bands, &c. of the _long stay_ throw in her way. Those finely-rounded points which mark the distinction and the grace of the female form, and which the artist, enamored of beauty, delights to delineate with the nicest accuracy, are, by the constant pressure of these _stays_, rendered indistinct, and in a short time are entirely destroyed. Let, then, the _long stay_ be restricted to the too abundant mass of fattening matronhood; so may art restrain the excesses, not of nature, but of disease. Unwieldly flesh was never yet seen in a perfectly healthy person. It generally arises either from intemperance overloading the functions of life, or dissipation decomposing them. Let the _padded corset_ rectify the defects of the deformed; but where nature has given the outline of a well-constructed form, forbear to traverse her designs. Youth should be left to spring up, unconfined, like the young cedar; and when the hand of man, or accident, does not distort the pliant stem, it will grow erect and firm, spreading its beautiful and cheerful shade over the heads of its planters. OF THE DETAIL OF DRESS. “We have run Through every change, that fancy at the loom Exhausted has had genius to supply; And, studious of mutation still, discard A real elegance a little used For monstrous novelty and strange disguise.” COWPER.