pictures. The point of the "joke" seems very often a mere excuse for
working off several incidents of beauty that have been perceived.

In dealing with _fashion_ du Maurier scores with posterity. Beauty, when
it really is recorded, is the one element in any transitory fashion that
survives the challenge of time. It is natural for one generation to hate
more than anything else in the world the fashions immediately preceding
the one affected. Pointed contemporary satire has, from the very shape
it must assume, an ephemeral success. It is only when something more
than the mere object of the satire is involved by some grace of the
satirist's genius--some response on his part to charm in the thing
assailed, that the work of satire comes down from its own time with an
indestructible ingredient in it.

As a record of feminine fashion du Maurier's drawings in _Punch_ are
remarkable. It must not be imagined that the history of fashion is
merely the tale of dressmakers' caprice. The very language of changing
ideals is the variation of the toilet. When women were restricted to an
oriental extent within convention, when to be "prim" was the aim of
life, no feature of dress was lacking that could put "abandonment" of
any but a moral kind, out of the question. A shake of the head too
quickly and the coiffure was imperilled; the movements that came within
the prescribed circle of dignity within the circle of the crinoline were
all of a rhythmical order. Women did not take to moving with freedom
because the crinoline went out, but the crinoline went out when they
took to moving with freedom. It went out simply because it was a
confounded nuisance. It was a natural costume only as long as women
imagined it was natural to them to be very still in demeanour. Once they
began to have opinions about that matter they soon sent the crinoline on
its way. The same process goes on with the fashions of wearing the