undeveloped tones in Nature’s painting. Pale eyes darken in exercise out-of-doors, and pasty skins grow prismatic like mother-of-pearl, in that wonderful way which fascinated Monsieur Taine when he beheld the miraculous brows and shoulders of English ladies. The idea did not seem to suggest itself to the critical Frenchman, but it will to every woman, that these charms were not wholly due to Nature. It is bewildering to read the announcements of toilet preparations under seductive names--rosaline, blanc de perle, rose-leaf powder, magnolia, velvetine, _eau romaine d’or_, and the rest. Think of the potent chemistry which waits outside our windows untried! Among the list of “eyebrow pencils,” “nail polishes,” and lip salves, a foreign paper brings to notice one invention which might be of use--a nose-machine, which, we are told, so directs the soft cartilage that an ill-formed nose is quickly shaped to perfection. No surgeon will deny that this is possible to a great degree. That it would be a boon nobody can doubt, seeing how many unfortunates walk the world whose noses have every appearance of having been sat upon, or made acquainted with the nether millstone. Long thimbles reaching to the second joint for shaping fingers are a new device, though something of the kind was used by very particular beauties fifty years ago. The only thing women would not do to increase their comeliness is to put themselves on the rack, unless indeed it were to live healthily. CHAPTER XII. Removal of Superfluous Hair.--Effects of High Living.--Work of Typhoid Fever.--Roman Tweezers.--Lola Montez’s Recipes.--Paste of Wood-ashes.--Bleaching Arms with Chloride.--Cautions about Depilatories.--Public Baths.--Improving Complexions by the Sulphur Vapor-bath.--How Arabian Women Perfume Themselves.--Profuse Hair, Sign of Nature’s Bounty.