you will not come under the discipline of fashion?
And who is Fashion? Is she not of all mistresses
the most imperious, and unreasonable, and cruel?
You may be pleased with her for a while, but you will
eventually feel her chains. With her iron whip,
brandished over your head, she will issue out her
commands, and you must obey them. She will drive
you, without mercy, through all her corruptive customs,
and through all her chameleon changes, and this against
your judgment and against your will. Do you keep
an equipage? You must alter the very shape of
your carriage, if she prescribes it. Is the livery
of your postilion plain? You must make it of
as many colours as she dictates. If you yourself
wear corbeau or raven colour to-day, you must change
it, if she orders you, to that of puce, or the flea,
to-morrow. But it is not only, in your equipage
and your dress, that she will put you under her control.
She will make you obedient to her in your address and
manners. She will force upon you rules for your
intercourse with others. She will point out to
you her amusements, and make you follow them.
She will place you under her cruel laws of honour,
from which she will disown you, if you swerve.
Now I beseech you, tell me, which you think you would
prefer, the discipline of the goddess Fashion, or that
of the good old mistress, which you may have wished
to leave? The one kindly points out to you, and
invites and warns you to avoid, every dangerous precipice,
that may be before you. The other is not satisfied,
but with your destruction. She will force you,
for a single word, uttered in a thoughtless moment,
to run the hazard of your life, or to lose what she
calls your character. The one, by preserving you
in innocence, preserves you happy. The greater
your obedience to her, the greater is your freedom;
and it is the best species of freedom, because it is
freedom from the pollutions of the world. The
other awakens your conscience, and calls out its stings.
The more obedient you are to her, the greater is your
slavery, and it is the worst species of slavery, because
it is often slavery to vice. In consequence of
the freedom which the one bestows upon you, you are
made capable of enjoying nature and its various beauties,
and by the contemplation of these, of partaking of
an endless feast. In consequence of the freedom
which the one bestows upon you, you are made capable
of enjoying nature, and its various beauties, and,
by the contemplation, of these, of partaking of an
endless feast. In consequence of the slavery
to which the other reduces you, you are cramped as
to such enjoyments. By accustoming you to be pleased
with ridiculous and corruptive objects, and silly
and corruptive changes, she confines your relish to
worthless things. She palsies your vision, and
she corrupts your taste. You see nature before
you, and you can take no pleasure in it. Thus
she unfits you for the most rational of the enjoyments
of the world, in which you are designed to live.