To impress upon your minds, my fair friends, that symmetry of figure ought ever to be accompanied by harmony of dress, and that there is a certain propriety in habiliment adapted to form, age, and degree, shall be the purport of my next observations. ON THE FEMALE FORM. “Who doth not feel, until his aching sight Faints into dimness with its own delight, His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess The might, the majesty of loveliness?” BYRON. To preserve the health of the human form, is the first object of consideration. This is of primary importance, for with its health we necessarily maintain its symmetry, and improve its beauty. The foundation of a just proportion, in all its parts, must be laid in infancy; for, “as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.” A light dress, which gives freedom to the functions of life and action, is the best adapted to permit unobstructed growth; for thence the young fibres, uninterrupted by obstacles of art, will shoot harmoniously into the form which nature drew. The garb of childhood should in all respects be easy; not to impede its movements by ligatures on the chest, the loins, the legs, or the arms. By this liberty, we shall see the muscles of the limbs gradually assume the fine swell and insertions which only unconstrained exercise can produce. The shape will sway gracefully on the firmly poised waist; the chest will rise in noble and healthy expanse; and the human figure will start forward at the blooming age of youth, maturing into the full perfection of unsophisticated nature. The lovely form of woman, in particular, thus educated, or rather thus left to its natural bias, assumes a variety of interesting characters. In one youthful figure, we see the lineaments of a wood-nymph; a form slight and elastic in all its parts. The shape, “Small by degrees, and beautifully less, From the soft bosom to the tender waist!” A foot light as that of her whose flying step scarcely brushed the “unbending corn;” and limbs, whose agile grace moved in gay harmony with the turns of her swan-like neck and sparkling eyes. Another fair one appears with the chastened dignity of a vestal. Her proportions are of a less aërial outline. As she draws near, we perceive that the contour of her figure is on a broader and less flexible scale than that of her more ethereal sister. Euphrosyne speaks in the one, Melpomene in the other.