I confess to a feeling of wonder when I look at Sir Joshua Reynolds and Romney's beautiful women. I wonder how they are going to get away from the pedestal or tree against which they are leaning without distressing very much their soft draperies when they move. But--how tender, how graceful, how refined, how fascinating, how pure and faithful and womanly these gentle beings are! Their dresses were the outcome of the character and customs of the period, but although very feminine and beautiful were not practical, and would not be adapted to our present needs. And this brings me to what I want to ask. What constitutes fitness and womanliness in dress? Do the dresses of the period possess these qualities? I certainly think not always, and without fitness and womanliness no dress can be artistically beautiful. To be beautiful, it should be the expression of a beautiful mind, a beautiful body, and of perfect health and ease, and of natural delight in movement. Also, it should have no association with pain. No dress can be beautiful that is disfigured by an innocent animal wantonly sacrificed to the vanity and egotism of the wearer. What womanly woman would wear real astracan on her jacket (if she knows _what_ real astracan is), or the corpses of gulls, doves, humming-birds, swallows, &c., in her hair? No one with a heart could do it, or, having a heart, the brain must be wanting which would enable her to think of the unjustifiable cruelty to which she gives her sanction. If I were a man, nothing would induce me to marry a girl who would wear a bird in her hat. I should think: "Either she is selfish and cold, and through life would sacrifice everything to her own vanity or interests, or else she has so little mind and judgment that she would be ill able to conduct the affairs of life with discretion." I should say that never was a pretty face rendered one whit the prettier by the body of a dead animal above it, but that on the contrary the attention is distracted from the living beauty beneath, and the mind is saddened and disgusted by the association of cruelty, and death, and decay, with the tender and beautiful womanhood which should rightly only call forth deepest feelings of admiration and respect. From these examples it would appear that unless restrained by more general knowledge of guiding principles, dress, as hitherto, will always err by the want of some one necessary quality or another, be it that of beauty or of utility, or by indulgence in the vulgar, masculine, or grotesque.