_Fashion Plates_


I like loitering at the bookstalls, looking in at the windows of
printshops, and romancing over the pictures I see of shepherdesses
and old-fashioned Beauties. Tall and slim and crowned with plumes
in one period, in another these Ladies become as wide-winged as
butterflies, or float, large, balloon-like visions, down summer
streets. And yet in all shapes they have always (I tell myself)
created thrilling effects of beauty, and waked in the breasts of
modish young men ever the same charming Emotion.

But then I have questioned this. Is the emotion always precisely
the same? Is it true to say that the human heart remains quite
unchanged beneath all the changing fashions of frills and
ruffles? In this elegant and cruel Sentiment, I rather fancy
that colour and shape do make a difference. I have a notion that
about 1840 was the Zenith, the Meridian Hour, the Golden Age of
the Passion. Those tight-waisted, whiskered Beaux, those
crinolined Beauties, adored one another, I believe, with a
leisure, a refinement, and dismay not quite attainable at other
dates.




_Mental Vice_