That this folly is in the air to-day, few will dispute. It seems to be perpetrated unconsciously by the greater number, with no particular object in view, simply because other people do it. An unanswerable argument when used by one of the fair sex! Few matrons stop to think for themselves, or they would realize that by appearing in the same attire as their daughters they challenge a comparison which can only be to their disadvantage, and should be if possible avoided. Is there any disillusion more painful than, on approaching what appeared from a distance to be a young girl, to find one’s self face to face with sixty years of wrinkles? That is a modern version of the saying, “an old head on young shoulders,” with a vengeance! If mistaken sexagenarians could divine the effect that tired eyes smiling from under false hair, aged throats clasped with collars of pearls, and rheumatic old ribs braced into a semblance of girlish grace, produce on the men for whose benefit such adornments have been arranged, reform would quickly follow. There is something absolutely uncanny in the illusion. The more successful it is, the more weird the effect. No one wants to see Polonius in the finery of Mercutio. What a sense of fitness demands is, on the contrary, a “make up” in keeping with the rôle, which does not mean that a woman is to become a frump, but only that she is to make herself attractive in another way. During the _Ancien Régime_ in France, matters of taste were considered all-important; an entire court would consult on the shade of a brocade, and hail a new coiffure as an event. The great ladies who had left their youth behind never then committed the blunder, so common among our middle-aged ladies, of aping the maidens of the day. They were far too clever for that, and appreciated the advantages to be gained from sombre stuffs and flattering laces. Let those who doubt study Nattier’s exquisite portrait of Maria Leczinska. Nothing in the pose or toilet suggests a desire on the painter’s part to rejuvenate his sitter. If anything, the queen’s age is emphasized as something honorable. The gray hair is simply arranged and partly veiled with black lace, which sets off her delicate, faded face to perfection, but without flattery or fraud. We find the same view taken of age by the masters of the Renaissance, who appreciated its charm and loved to reproduce its grace. Queen Elizabeth stands out in history as a woman who struggled ungracefully against growing old. Her wigs and hoops and farthingales served only to make her ridiculous, and the fact that she wished to be painted without shadows in order to appear “young,” is recorded as an aberration of a great mind. Are there no painters to-day who will whisper to our wives and mothers the secret of looking really lovely, and persuade them to abandon their foolish efforts at rejuvenation?