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in the frequent sobriety of tone in their dress, and in their careful interposition of a wide space of neutral between opposed colours worn at the same time, consists the famed superiority of the Parisian lady over the Englishwoman. It is said commonly, also, that the former invariably “knows how to put on a shawl,” implying that our ladies have not that knowledge. The “Gigot.”Our belief is, that English ladies possess, by whatever means obtained, a considerable taste and skill in dress; but it may be years before a cry to the contrary will subside. It does not matter how well anybody does anything, if there is unfortunately a cry against him raised by designing people, and continued by uninquiring ones. Frenchwomen can, and do often, dress vulgarly, with an ostentatious disregard to rule, and with violent and novel colouring. If you should see the bonnet pathetically described by Haynes Bailey,—that bright blue bonnet, when its renovator was about to “trim it with yellow, and line it with green,”—it would probably be on the head of a Frenchwoman.

The effects of colour on complexion are learnt from experience; and the subject cannot be treated successfully in a short paper like the present. Portrait artists know how many are the colours that mingle in one face, and slightly varying proportions and small omissions produce differences in the skin, so that colours which suit one person are not becoming to another, although the complexions of the two are supposed to be the same. A candid friend, or the more candid looking-glass, must be the ultimate appeal. Now that we have touched the delicate subject of the mirror, let us notice the fact of how much the position of a glass, in reference to the light, has to do in making a person satisfied or discontented with his, or her, appearance. The most flattering position for the glass is when placed between two windows, the equal cross light reducing inequalities and roughnesses to a minimum. The most unbecoming reflexion is from a glass in front of a window, the only one in a room. It is remarkable, and perhaps unexplained, that any irregularity of the features, anything out of drawing in the face, is increased when seen in a glass. There is a great difference in the colour of the glass itself: some glasses are very pure and white; The Oval.some have a greenish tinge, necessarily producing disheartening reflexions.

Returning to form, we must own that the bonnet adopted for the last two or three years—the spoon-bonnet in all its varieties and sub-species—is most reprehensible. If an ellipse is needed, the longer axis is required across the brow. By generating two ellipses from the chin, the oval face and the oval bonnet—the latter including the former, and having the same perpendicular axis,—the effect is most disagreeable. Contrast with these the Norma wreath, the Mary-Queen-of-Scots head-dress, or even the bonnet in fashion four years ago. Pile Pelion on Ossa; put inside the spoon, above the forehead, Paris, June, 1863.⁠London, July, 1863.a large bouquet of flowers, and make feathers nod over the extreme summit, as we saw in Paris last June; or bring the hair above the head, on cushions surmounted by a crown of stars, as we have seen in a London theatre in July this year,—yet taste and simplicity will triumph over what is artificial and unsymmetrical.

One observation about milliners and modistes, and our few remarks on modern dress are finished. Why is it that when the tide of taste turns in our favour—when, after many efforts, we at last apprehend simplicity, and rejoice that a female costume rather enhances than detracts from its wearer’s natural beauty—why is it, we ask, that the flood so soon turns, and that next season the charming head-gear and the becoming sleeve have