music and beauty. And, like ourselves, they have found no subject so
worthy of the highest efforts of art as their own dress. But the
clothing of the body must conform more or less to the figure, and so,
for a field in which invention and fancy may sport untrammelled, a lady
turns to her hat and a bird to its tail. And by both, with equal
heroism, every consideration of mere comfort, convenience, health, or
safety is swept aside in obedience to the higher aim. Is this only a
flippant jocularity, or is there here in very truth some profound law of
the mind revealing itself in spheres seemingly so disconnected?

Look at a peacock. Its train, by the way, is a false tail, like the
chignon of twenty years ago, or the fringe of the present day; the true
tail is under it, and serves no purpose but to support it. Now the
peacock lives on the ground, among scrub and brushwood, haunted by
jackals and wild cats. They, like soldiers in khaki, reconnoitre him in
a uniform expressly designed to elude the eye, but he flaunts a flag
resplendent with green and gold. And when his one chance of life lies in
springing nimbly from the ground and committing himself to his strong
wings, he must lift and carry this ponderous paraphernalia with him. And
the terrible Bonelli's eagle is soaring above. But all is risked proudly
for the sake of the morning hour in the glade where the ladies assemble.
And the peacock is only one of many. Not to mention the lyre bird, the
Argus pheasant, the bird of paradise, and other splendid examples, there
are common dicky-birds which point the moral and adorn the tail as
emphatically.

If the tail is a rudder, where should you look to find it in its most
simple and efficient form but among the flycatchers, which make their
living by aerial acrobatics after flies? Yet this family seems to be
peculiarly prone to the vanity of a stylish tail. The paradise