ARE WOMEN NATURAL ARISTOCRATS?


A clergyman's wife in England has lately set on foot a reform movement in
respect to dress; and, like many English reformers, she aims chiefly to
elevate the morals and manners of the lower classes, without much reference
to her own social equals. She proposes that "no servant, under pain of
dismissal, shall wear flowers, feathers, brooches, buckles or clasps,
earrings, lockets, neck-ribbons, velvets, kid gloves, parasols, sashes,
jackets, or trimming of any kind on dresses, and, above all, no crinoline;
no pads to be worn, or frisettes, or _chignons_, or hair-ribbons. The dress
is to be gored and made just to touch the ground, and the hair to be drawn
closely to the head, under a round white cap, without trimming of any kind.
The same system of dress is recommended for Sunday-school girls,
schoolmistresses, church-singers, and the lower orders generally."

The remark is obvious, that in this country such a course of discipline
would involve the mistress, not the maid, in the "pain of dismissal." The
American clergyman and clergyman's wife who should even "recommend" such a
costume to a schoolmistress, church-singer, or Sunday-school girl,--to say
nothing of the rest of the "lower orders,"--would soon find themselves
without teachers, without pupils, without a choir, and probably without a
parish. It is a comfort to think that even in older countries there is less
and less of this impertinent interference: the costume of different ranks
is being more and more assimilated; and the incidental episode of a few
liveries in our cities is not enough to interfere with the general current.