But when the nymph-like form assumes a regal port, or a commanding dame pretends to “skip and play,” the affectation on both sides is equally absurd: discords of this kind are ever ridiculous and odious. Besides these, there are affectations of other descriptions, of equal folly and bad effect. Some ladies, to whom nature has given a good sight, and lovely orbs to look through, must needs pretend a kind of half-blindness, and they go peeping about through an eye-glass, dangling at the end of a long gold chain, hanging at their necks. Not content with this affectation of one defect, they assume another, and lisp so inarticulately, that hardly three words in a sentence are intelligible. All such follies as these are not more a death-blow to all respect for the novice that plays them off, than they are sure antidotes to any charms she may possess. Simplicity is the perfection of form; simplicity is the perfection of fine dressing; simplicity is the perfection of air and manners. In the details of carriage, we must not omit a due attention to gait, and its accompanying air. We find that it was “by her _graceful walk_ the Queen of Love was known!” In this particular, the French women far exceed us. Pope observes, that “they move easiest who have learnt to _dance_.” And it is the step of the highly-accomplished dancer that we see in the generality of well-bred Frenchwomen; not the march of the military sergeant, which is the usual study with our pedestrian Graces. There is a buoyant lightness, a dignified ease in the walk of a lady, who has been taught the use of her limbs by a fine dancer, which is never seen in her who has been drilled by the halbert, and told to _stand at ease_ with her hands resting on her stomach, as if reposing on the trigger of her fire-lock. Such a way as we have fallen upon to teach our daughters the _graceful step of the Queen of Love_, is, indeed, so singular, that until another race of Amazons arise, to whom military tactics may be useful, we have no chance of any imitators. Indeed, the marching walk of Englishwomen is so ridiculous, even in the eyes of their own countrymen, that I remember of being one day in St. James’s Park, with one of these female recruits, when a sentinel, with a humorous gravity, struck his musket to her as she passed. Both in the case of air and gait, it is necessary to begin early to train the person and the limbs to the ease and grace you wish. It is difficult to straighten the stem long left to diverge into irregular wildness; but the tender tree, pliant in youth, needs only the directing hand of a careful gardener to train it to symmetry and luxuriance.