Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462, page 29 by Various Authors
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, old or young, rich or poor, are reminded that what is new and fashionably made, and, above all, fresh and clean, looks infinitely better and more ladylike than the richest, most expensive dresses, caps, or bonnets that are the least tarnished, faded, or of a peculiar cut no longer worn. Those candid ladies who persist in wearing gray hair--a mode the author rather approves of, except where nature, which she sometimes does, silvers the locks while the countenance still continues youthful--are requested not to render themselves absurd by intermingling artificial flowers; and a great deal of ridicule is also directed against the English, who not only caricature the French fashions they copy, but go about grinning in incongruous colours, instead of tasteful contrasts, jumbling old bonnets with new gowns and half-dirty shawls, and who walk the streets in carriage costume. Brides bearing about orange-flowers longer than the day of their marriage are unmercifully quizzed; as likewise the habit of wearing satins in summer, or straw in winter--sins exclusively British. Young married women are told not to go into public without their husbands or some steady middle-aged matron; they may take a walk with an unmarried friend, although this last must never attempt to fly in the face of propriety by promenading with a companion like herself; and no lady of any age can possibly enter a library, museum, or picture-gallery alone, unless she wishes to study as an artist.
I grieve to say, in that portion which is devoted to modesty and propriety of behaviour, the extreme freedom of manner and conversation in which young English females indulge, are both severely reprobated; their imprudence in walking about and sitting apart with young men held up as an example to be sedulously avoided by well-bred French girls; their so frequently taking complimens d'usage for real admiration, and either fancying the poor man, innocently repeating mere words of course, to be a lover, or else blushing and looking offended, as if h