And just as the saucy quid pro quo annoys on repetition, so the odd, quaint habits which deny or caricature the body annoy the eye after a brief while, and it returns refreshed to feel how much more satisfying and agreeable is the uncontorted frame, like the kindly, softened manners.

1 See The Queen, Nov. 6, 1879.

That word kindly, implying kinship, harmony, a natural tie or connection in its derivation, is not misapplied to dress. The Empire dress, like the rams-horn shoes or the wheel farthingale, was not kindly in the old sense of the word, for it denied the natural lines; and it was not kind in the new sense, for it exposed and drew attention to every defect.

I have seen young girls, and especially very little girls, who are naturally rather bottle-shaped, look charming in this Empire dress, when simply made, and when they are sufficiently nice-looking to be able to bear it. But, I repeat, little girls were not dressed thus during the Empire - this was the adult woman's dress. I have also seen elderly ladies with a certain Puritan dignity of carriage look very well in it: certain ladies, neither old nor very juvenile, with well-modelled graceful figures and beautiful hair, become this dress - I do not say it ever becomes them; in these cases it is a question of being too pretty to be spoiled by one's garments. But, under such circumstances, one always thinks, how much more beautiful, how much more graceful and seductive, would all this be in a dress intrinsically good ! In such a costume as that of Charles I.'s time, or Charles II.'s, or a fourteenth-century coat-hardie, or a George II. sacque, or a hundred elegant toilettes which may be found in the National Gallery - how much more picturesque a figure would she present who is charming even in the barren, bottle-shaped, insignificant costume of an Imitation Greek!

The very best form, well pruned and idealised, of the dress which most people mean when they speak of 'Empire' dress, is to be found in H. P. Briggs's picture of Juliet meeting her nurse and page, now in the National Gallery. But I cannot reiterate too often that this is not the true Empire dress, for satin was against their principles - and so was a train. The imitation Greeks began with a train in muslin; they may be said roughly to have ended with a train in silk and satin, but this was the ultimate revolt against cheapness and 'equality,' and speedily resolved itself into a new fashion, with long waist and somewhat full skirt. Juliet's dress will be seen to be excessively short in front, three or four inches from the ground: this was an ingenious device in about 1820 to display pretty feet without sacrificing length of folds, but it is not often really becoming, though, as before said, on a pretty woman everything is pretty. It was, as may be supposed, not long popular.

No costume is good which has no folds, or which diminishes height as a short dress and a low neck invariably do. Beautiful as are the lines of the normal female form, the lines of long folds really add new graces to it, as any artist who has greatly studied the frame will tell you. If a dress deprives the frame of its smoothest curves and its easiest attitudes, without adding any new grace, and without concealing structural defects, that dress is artistically bad and indefensible; and it seems to me that the Empire dress had all these faults. Therefore, while I like it for little girls, because it corresponds to the childish waistless figure and active habits - infinitely better than an attempt to import 'shape ' by corset or belt - I can never think it becoming or suitable in any way to the mature figure, which is completely different from the child's, and whose every line and curve and attitude is in opposition to the lines of the costume.

There were other objections to the Empire dress which I have intentionally not dwelt upon, my concern being chiefly with beauty, and my conviction firm that women will risk every peril in order to be pretty. These were indelicacy (I have heard my grandmother say my grandfather would never allow her to wear a bodice less than four inches deep, an unfashionable depth which will speak for itself), and danger through colds and cancer (the latter was fearfully common, owing to women's efforts to obtain a small waist across the upper ribs - curious union of the old Norman love for 'a myddel smal,' with, the classic indifference to it): objections which I do not think the artist David was in any way responsible for when he forced on the pseudo-classic fashions.

The fashion of hair-dressing, in its best and most idealised form of that time, may be studied from certain portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence, e.g., the Dowager Countess of Darnley (National Gallery, Room II.), who wears the knot high, but of no exaggerated size, nor of a disagreeable hardness and smoothness. Upon the first introduction of Greek modes a large number of hair fashions were adopted from the many statues, statuettes, and coins belonging to Greek territory, which show them clearly, and Greece could boast of very elaborate fashions of hair-dressing in her late time. But in England or France they were never joined to the indispensable mantle as in Greece, and they were most unsuitably combined with stays, long waists, pinched in by four inch belts, full petticoats, and mighty gigot sleeves (1830-40), which followed the short waists such as Juliet's mentioned above. Sir Thomas Lawrence shows us many heads, e.g. 'Psyche,' Mrs. Arbuthnot. etc, cropped and denuded of half their natural locks, under some mistaken idea that the Greeks wore little curls all over their heads like young children.

There is no reason, as far as I see, to suppose that Greek women past young girlhood wore short hair.

If people will be wise, and go to the fountain head whence the art of the Empire drew its inspiration, they will find a beautiful costume, admitting of great variety in manner of arrangement, not great variety in texture, and no variety at all in cut. The lines of the long under-robe and of the peplum, the length and grace of folds, depth of shadows, etc, are determined entirely by the human form and its changing attitudes; ergo, the form must be very candidly exhibited; and ergo, the charm of the dress depends upon the beauty and grace of the wearer.