with a load of seed wheat to a farm-house some miles distant: on the road they met a waggoner, who asked where they were going. They told him; and he answered, "The Lord have mercy upon you, then, for you and your horses will be sadly taken care of." When they arrived at the house, the master came out, and said, "Well, my boys, you are safely arrived; come in and refresh yourselves; my men shall unload your wheat, and take care of your horses." This was accordingly done. When Mr. B. was in the house, partaking of his hospitality, he thought certainly this man was one of those he read of in the bible, who were despised for their religion, being exceedingly surprised to find him act so contrary to the account he had heard; when, looking at the chimney-piece, he saw the following lines: "I have no house-room for the cursed swearer, Mr. B. lived to be upwards of seventy, when he visited that same place, found the house new built, in the possession of a good man, and the same lines written over the new chimney-piece. FASHION. "THE power of fashion (says Mr. Cogan in his Treatise on the Passions) is an ideal influenza, that spreads with the utmost rapidity, infecting a whole community where it commenced; sometimes extending to distant nations, and acquiring such a strength in its progress, that nothing can resist its force. It does not possess the degree of merit attendant upon the excessive love of novelty, which always imagines the object to possess some degree of worth; a circumstance, this, by no means essential to the influence of fashion, whose authority is, in general, derived from things known to be idle and insignificant. Fashion gives absolute sway to modes, forms, colours, &c., wantonly introduced by the whim of an individual, with whom the majority have not the most distant connection; concerning whom they are totally ignorant, unless circumstances and situations of notoriety, should render their characters either equivocal or unequivocal. It is capable of instantaneously altering our opinion of the nature and qualities of things, without demanding any painful exertions of the understanding, or requiring the slow process of investigation. With the quickness of a magic wand, it in a moment subverts all those ideas of beauty, elegance, and propriety, we had before cherished. It makes us reject, as odious, what we had lately contemplated as most desirable; and raptures are inspired by qualities we had just considered as pernicious and deformed. Unwilling to renounce our title to rationality, unable to resist the power of fashion, we make every attempt to reconcile reason with absurdity: thus, in numberless instances, we attempt to vindicate to ourselves and others the novel affection. We are assiduous to find out some peculiar excellence or advantage in whatever becomes the idol of the day, and to discover some insufferable defect in the divinity we have discarded. That which was once deemed grand and majestic in size or form, will now strike the eye as insupportably clumsy; and the regularity we once admired, now renders an object stiff, precise, and formal. Colours, which were yesterday so delicately elegant, will appear to-day faint, faded, and lifeless; and those which were lately much too strong and glaring for our weak optics, become, in an instant, bright, glowing, and majestic. Fashion will render that particular garb, which we once thought so warm and comfortable, hot and insupportable as the sultry dog days; and it makes the slightest covering, contrary to its pristine nature, remarkably pleasant in the depth of winter. The flowing hair, or adjusted ringlets, shall at one period be considered as becoming and elegant; at another, be rejected as an insufferable mark of effeminacy, and reprobated as demanding a culpable waste of our most precious time; while their close amputation is deemed both manly and commodious. At one period, fashion imperiously orders the tightest ligatures to encircle the neck, as if the separation of some excresence were intended; at another, it recommends the large and swoln cravat, as if it thought a poultice were necessary to assauge the irritation occasioned by the preceding mode, and it benevolently permits the chin to partake of the soothing warmth. It directs decency to excite a blush at being detected without any other headdress than that ordained by nature; and it is also able to suppress the blush of female delicacy at exposures which scarcely leave any room for the exercise of the most licentious imagination!" These are admirable observations: let the votaries of fashion read them, and reflect on the abject slavery in which they are held. Too much attention to fashionable dress certainly displays an imbecility of mind. Alphon sus, King of Arragon, used to wear no better apparel than the ordinary sort of his subjects did; and being advised by one to put on kingly apparel, he answered, "I had rather excel my subjects in my behaviour and authority, than in a diadem and purple garments. '? Augustus Cæsar used to say, "that rich and gay clothing was either the ensign of pride, or the nurse of luxury." A very just sentiment. Alexander Severus, when he came to be Emperor of Rome, sold all the precious stones which were in the palace, saying," that they were not of any use to men. He wore very plain and ordinary apparel, saying, "that the empire consisted in virtue, not in bravery. In the reign of W. Rufus there was a mode which prevailed throughout Europe, both among men and women, to give an enormous length to their shoes, to draw the toe to a sharp point, and to affix it to the figure of a bird's bill, or some such ornament which was turned upwards, and which was often sustained by gold or silver chains tied to the knee. The ecclesiastics took exception at this ornament, which they said was an attempt to belie the scripture, where it is affirmed that no man can add to his stature; and they declaimed against it with great vehemence; nay, assembled some synods, who actually condemned it. But such was the power of fashion and custom, that though the clergy at that time could overturn thrones, and had sufficient authority to send above a million of men on their errand (crusades) to the deserts of Asia, they could not prevail against these long-pointed shoes; and it ac tually maintained its ground, in opposition to all, for several centuries. "It may be a sufficient censure of some fashions," observes Mr. Newton, "to say that they are ridiculous. Their chief effect is to disfigure the female form. And perhaps the inventors of them had no worse design than to make a trial, how far they could lead the passive unthinking many in the path of absurdity. Some fashions, which seem to have been at first designed to hide a personal deformity, have obtained a general prevalence with those who had no such deformity to hide. We are informed that Alexander had a wry neck, and therefore his courtiers carried their heads on one side, that they might appear to be in the king's fashion. We smile at this servility in people who lived in Macedonia twenty centuries before we were born; yet it is little less general among ourselves in the present day. A lady once asked a minister, whether a person might not pay some attention to dress and the fashions without being proud. "Madam," replied the minister, "whenever you see the tail of the fox out of the hole, you may be sure the fox is there." A certain minister lately paid a visit to a lady of his acquaintance who was newly married, and who was attired in the modern indecent fashion. After the usual compliments, he familiarly said, "I hope you have got a good husband, Madam.” "Yes, Sir," replied she," and a good man, too." "I don't know what to say about his goodness," added the minister, rather bluntly; "for my Bible teaches me that a good man should clothe his wife, but he lets you go half naked." |