When Innocence left the world, astonished man blushed at his own and his partner’s nakedness, and coverings were soon invented. For many an age, the twisted foliage of trees, and the skins of beasts, were the only garments which clothed our ancestors. Decoration was unknown, excepting the wild flower, plucked from the luxuriant shrub, the shell from the beach, or the berry off the tree. Nature was then unsophisticated; and the lover looked for no other attraction in his bride, than the peach-bloom on her cheek--the downcast softness of her consenting eye. In after times, when Avarice ploughed the earth, and Ambition bestrode it, the gem and the silken fleece, the various product of the loom, and the Tyrian mystery of dyes, all united to give embellishments to beauty, and splendor to majesty of mien. But even at that period, when the east and south laid their decorating riches at the feet of woman, we see, by the sculpture yet remaining to us, that the dames of Greece (the then exemplars of the world) were true to the simple laws of just taste. The amply-folding robe, cast round the harmonious form; the modest clasp and zone on the bosom; the braided hair, or the veiled head; these were the fashions alike of the wife of a Phocion, and the mistress of an Alcibiades. A chastened taste ruled at their toilets; and from that hour to this, the forms and modes of Greece have been those of the poet, the sculptor, and the painter. Rome, queen of the world! the proud dictatress to Athenian and Spartan dames, disdained not to array herself in their dignified attire; and the statues of her virgins, her matrons, and her empresses, show, in every portico of her ancient streets, the graceful fashions of her Grecian province. The irruption of the Goths and Vandals made it needful for women to assume a more repulsive garb. The flowing robe, the easy shape, the soft, unfettered hair, gave place to skirts, shortened for flight or contest--to the hardened vest, and head buckled in gold or silver. Thence, by a natural descent, have we the iron boddice, stiff farthingale, and spiral coiffure, of the middle ages. The courts of Charlemagne, of our Edwards, Henries, and Elizabeth, all exhibit the figures of women as if in a state of siege. Such lines of circumvallation and outworks; such impregnable bulwarks of whale-bone, wood, and steel; such impassable mazes of gold, silver, silk, and furbelows, met a man’s view, that, before he had time to guess it was a woman that he saw, she had passed from his sight; and he only formed a vague wish on the subject, by hearing, from an interested father or brother, that the moving castle was one of the softer sex.