CRINOLINE.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 195, 2 September 1859, Page 4

CRINOLINE.

Griistoline has beeD, and apparently to no purpose attacked upon a great variety of grounds.; It has been * over* and over again condemned'"'ate dangerous, ugly, expensive, and inconvenient. Yet its proportions increase rather than ■ diminish. A correspondent of the Times now denounces it as (he says he can use no other word) "indecent:"— " Lycurgua excused the Spartan scantiness of female attire by saying that public decency served as a veil to them. That may have been the case at Sparta, but we have only to watch the curious and iriquistive glances of the crowd, y who immediately stop to see a fashionable lady descend from her carriage or cross a muddy street, to feel that that safeguard does not exist in London. "No man with ordinary feelings of delicacy can pass an hour in the streets without .seeing much, to startle, if not to shock him. It is a millenium of quite a novel kind, even more surprising than that in which the Lion and the Lamb are to lie down together, for [the gentlemen -to have to blush for tbe ladies". Heaven forbidthat in the pursuit of a ridiculous fashion English women should abandon their distinctive modesty—that modesty which is more precious than gold—in favor of the brazen art ofthose who " Ont su faire un front gui ne rougit jamais 1" I believe that in no period of the world's history has female dress been more immodest than at present, and I am certain that the use of the fine linen and the hoods and the veils of the wanton-eyed daughters of Zion, " walking and mincing as they go," could not have been attended with more dangerous results than the fashion of cages de poules, aciers, and other iron abominations. The most shrinking modesty may be represented with the most homeepathic attire (dishevelled hair and a bathing towel are enough), but -I defy the imaginative to conceive it in connection with loop dress, crinoline, vandyked petticoats, and Balmoral boots. The French philosopher tells us that men make the laws and women the manners; but, as manners make the man we find that our whole social condition depends upon the ladies. How doubly careful ought they, then, to be to guard as their most inestimable birthright that sensitive delicacy that can alone refine the coarser nature of man !" This severe critic signs himself " E.S." He is answered by " J.8.E.," who professes himself an admirer of the fashion within moderate bounds. "I will ask "E.S." to compare his opinions with those of his male acquaintance of tho present day, and adopt the result. The -verdict of 9 out of 10 I venture to assert will be favorable to crinoline in its light and improved construction (not the iron fabric, which it is a "day after the fair'1' to condemn), as showing the dress to perfection, preserving alike its texture and smooth effect, and useful also in not offering the same incentive to tight lancing as a scanty dress without this artificial support. Judging by the improved gait which is everywhere observable I imagine that increased comfort and greater elasticity are . afforded by the use of crinoline, but I am here enroaching' on the due limits of my subject. I will not expatiate upon the slanderous imputation that a man cannot pass an hour in the streets without blushing for a fashion which, with so much comfort and elegance to the fair sex, exposes their well-clad feet to view more than formerly. God forbid that the mind of Christian men should be so ill-regulated as to see immodesty or indelicacy where they simply and innocently admire; for this would be to contend that we are open to morbid impressions and influences which are only exceptional even among nude savages."-