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peared in a dress of gingham-a rather costly fabric at its first introduction, and almost exclusively used by the Quality. Gingham has had a fall in the market since then.

Adverting, in his American Notes, to the well-dressed factory girls at Lowell, Mr. Dickens avowed his pleasure in seeing the humbler classes of society careful of their dress and appearance, and even, if they please, decorated with such little trinkets as come within the compass of their means. Supposing it confined within reasonable limits, he would always encourage this kind of pride, as a worthy element of self-respect, in any person he might employ. "Ah, sir," said a costermonger girl to Mr. Mayhew, "a neat gown does a deal with a man; he always likes a girl best when everybody else likes her too." A solicitor-general of Mr. Trollope's making owns to a similar preference: "I love women dearly," says Sir Henry Harcourt; "I like them to be near me; but then I like them to be nice. When a woman is nasty, she is very nasty." Sharp and ready is Piero's retort on Romola, when the latter, in self-vindication, reminds him that he too has been heard to declaim as indignantly against gew-gaws, and wigs, and rouge-pots, as Fra Girolamo himself:-"What then? I never said that a woman should make a black patch of herself against the background. Va! Madonna Antigone, it's a shame for a woman with your hair and shoulders to run into such nonsenseleave it to women who are not worth painting. What! the most holy Virgin herself has always been dressed well; that's the doctrine of the Church:-talk of heresy indeed!"

Beauty is a blessing, argues the author of John Halifax, Gentleman; and whatever innocently adds thereto is a blessing likewise; else should we never have advanced from fig-leaves and beasts' skins to that harmony of form and colour which we call good "dress." Essay-writing On the Subject of Clothes, this lady asserts, that from the peach-cheeked baby, smiling from behind her clouds of cambric, or her swansdown and Cashmere, to the picturesque old gentlewoman with her silver-grey or rich black silks, her delicate laces and her snowy lawns-there is nothing more charming, more satisfactory to eye and heart, than a welldressed woman. "No," Grand'mère loquitur; "whatever Netty may think when I check her occasioned outbursts of linen-drapery splendour, I do not undervalue dress either in theory or practice; nor, to the latest hour of conscious volition, shall she ever see her grandmother looking one whit uglier than old age compels me to look."-Every woman, contends a masculine essayist on Beauty and Brains, is bound to make the best of herself. And explicitly he pronounces the strong-minded women who hold themselves superior to the obligations of dress and manner, and all the plea

sant little artificial graces belonging to an artificial cultivation, and who think any sacrifice made to appearance just so much waste of power, to be "awful creatures, ignorant of the real meaning of their sex-social Graia wanting in every charm of womanhood, and to be diligently shunned by the wary." This making the best of themselves is demonstrably and undeniably a very different thing from making dress and personal vanity the first considerations in life. But the charge against them is, that they are apt to be either frights or flirts, fashionable to an extent that lauds them in illimitable folly, or "so dowdy that they disgrace a wellordered drawing-room, and in an evening party, among nicelydressed women, stand out as living sermons on slovenliness." Clouds they are on the sunshine. And can such things be, and overcome us as such summer clouds, without our special wonder? The Angel in the House has her own particular laureate in Mr. Coventry Patmore. And in the poem bearing her name and style, Jane is made to write after this familiar sort to Mrs. Graham:

-I fancied long

That care in dress was very wrong,
Till Frederick, in his startling way,
When I began to blame, one day,
The Admiral's wife, because we hear
She spends two hours, or something near,
In dressing, took her part, and said
How all things deck themselves that wed;
How birds and plants grow fine to please
Each other in their marriages;
And how (which certainly is true-
It never struck me-did it you?)
Dress was, at first, Heaven's ordinance,
And has much Scripture countenance.
For Eliezer, we are told,

Adorn'd with jewels and with gold

Rebecca. In the Psalms, again,

How the King's Daughter dress'd! And then

The Good Wife in the Proverbs, she

Made herself clothes of tapestry,

Purple and silk; and there's much more

I had not thought about before.

But desint cætera. And here accordingly cætera desunt.

THE ORPHANS.

BY E. V. RIPPINGILLE.

I.

THE CENTENARIAN.

IN a pretty little village, not far from the venerable city of Canterbury, there are people still living who remember well the persons described and the circumstances related in the following narrative. Upon a spot so quiet and out of the way, the smallest rarity was a wonder; no strolling ballad-singer or brawling tinker ever made their appearance in the half green lanes, called streets, upon whom every window, every pair of eyes and every mouth-at least of all the children-were not opened as wide as they could set them. Added to this, not unnatural, curiosity, the quiet inhabitants of this place had not only the common quantity of the love of the marvellous, but were more than ordinarily tinctured with superstition. Many of the old customs and observances of times past, such as are generally forgotten in more civilised places, were still kept up here, and signs and warnings, dreams and omens, were regarded with superstitious reverence: all sorts of supernaturalisms, in the shape of voices, noises, and sights, had been seen in abundance, some even by daylight. Perhaps these good people differed but little from folks of similar condition and in similar remote situations, but this weakness made them the more liable to be acted upon, and to yield readily to the influence of the circumstances which now beset them.

The story is of no very marvellous cast, and may be introduced by a relation of some simple facts with which it is connected, and perhaps it may be taken as a proof, too, that something of a primitive character still existed in this village, when so simple an event as the one in question should have been celebrated with so much good feeling and with such "pomp and circumstance."

It was just at the end of the harvest-time that an old woman who had inhabited the same cottage all her life long, attained the age of a hundred years! This event certain of the better class of the village determined to celebrate by a kind of festival, or public demonstration, which was to include, first a procession and a little matter of ceremony, then a good substantial dinner to all comers, and, lastly, this memorable day was to finish with a dance for the active, the young, and the gay. For some weeks previously the thing was talked of with the usual anticipations, and for several Oct.-VOL. CXLVII. NO. DXCVIII.

2 E

days preparations were making by those concerned, and as this included the whole population, there was certainly no deficiency of helpers. At length the happy day arrived, and not as appointed days generally do come, in gloom and damp, but in real good, warm, and bright sunshine. Everybody was astir at daybreak, running to and fro in different directions, holding consultations, and talking and laughing in groups, and a certain party were busily and importantly engaged at a certain gate which led into a corn-field, in which stood in rich abundance a full ripened crop of tall brown wheat, the heavy ear bending slightly the clear, bright, yellow straw. What were these busy people doing? Two tall boughs of trees were being fixed to the two gate-posts, and from the stems of these ribbons and flowers of various colours were attached, so that a kind of arch was formed. Furthermore these stems were made to support on one side a spinning-wheel and a distaff, with wool and flax upon it, tied of course with bright-coloured ribbons, and on the other were suspended the implements of husbandry, a spade, a hoe, a hedgingknife, and a reaping-hook. Everybody was too busy to observe such an appearance, otherwise it might have been seen that the sunburnt faces of a farmer, who did the directing part with proper dignity, and three or four of his labourers, gave evident proofs that this same cornfield was to become the theatre of some grand

event.

Conjecture was very busy to little purpose for several hours; never, perhaps, before did green boughs, bright ribbons, a spinningwheel, a rock (as the distaff was then called), and the other matters already named, create such marvels. However, about one o'clock in the day the mystery was unravelled. The crowd had gradually drawn off, and had surrounded the cottage in which the centenarian lived. This cottage kept continually receiving visitors, composed of all the genteel people of the village. Ladies and gentlemen came very smartly dressed, and all were decorated with blue ribbons. The churchwardens and the constables had wands tied with ribbons, and waited at the door, occasionally plucking a honeysuckle from the shrub that ornamented it. Presently there was a great stir within, and it was evident that something was coming out. The movement first appeared in the constables, who drove off the boys, who, from the universal good nature shown by everybody, had began to verify literally the old proverb about "inches" and "ells" as regards the distance they ought to have kept, so that some of the forwardest did not hesitate to flatten their noses and their full-blown cheeks against the small diamond-shaped panes of the old lady's lattice window, by looking in. But now off they flew, and at the same moment

their issued from the cottage-door two ladies, and, resting upon the proffered arm of each, with tardy, but not very feeble step, came the cottager of one hundred years. She was a little creature, stooping slightly, and still bearing an aspect of health and cheerfulness, and with a complexion that all the cosmetics in the world would not produce-one, indeed, of which a maiden of twenty might have been proud. Her dress was neatness and cleanliness itself, her grey hair was turned up in front, her face surrounded by a cap, a black silk bonnet of an antiquated fashion was fastened upon her head with two steel pins, the heads of which shone bright in the sun; first a white, and then a second and a third handkerchief covered her shoulders, the ends neatly pinned down; a gown of a very large flower pattern, partly covered at the back a quilted petticoat, but on each side it was shown, by the happy contrivance of drawing the hem of the gown through the pocket-holes; a snow-white apron, betraying the folds in which it had been carefully laid up, was tied in front; shoes with buckles adorned the feet, and a pair of short black gloves on the arms completed the costume. Two and two came the ladies and gentlemen, each wearing a rosette of blue ribbon, and laughing and talking most affably. The procession thus formed amounted to about ten couples. It began to move forward at rather a solemn pace, it must be confessed, but the attentions paid to the old cottager fully accounted for it, and gave it an extra air of interest. The populace were directed to join in, which they readily did, and thus formed a very goodly show, continuing to move forward with certain little interruptions, but in the best possible humour, until it reached the gate of the cornfield we have described. Necks were now stretched out, and every eye strained to see what was to be done. Presently the line was broken, and all approached and surrounded the gateway.

As people in authority do not readily condescend to let the vulgar into their secrets, but few were aware of what was to be achieved at this halting-place; but in a minute or two the gate was thrown open, the sickle was removed from the place where it had been suspended, and taken by the farmer to whom the field belonged, and who, in conjunction with one of the gentlemen, led the old cottager into the field, and to the first margin where grew the ripe and abundant wheat. And now the grand secret came out; the old lady took the sickle in hand, and being left to herself, commenced at once to grasp in her thin hands a small handful of the ripe grain, and to cut it off with the other. A simultaneous shout of wonder and approbation ascended to the skies. She continued to cut handful after handful, until there was quite enough to make an ordinary sized sheaf. The farmer

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