The toilet may attract notice, but it is the person that wins our hearts.  Our finery is not us; its very artificiality often offends, and that which is least noticeable in itself often wins the most attention.  The education of our girls is, in this respect, absolutely topsy-turvy.  Ornaments are promised them as rewards, and they are taught to delight in elaborate finery.  “How lovely she is!” people say when she is most dressed up.  On the contrary, they should be taught that so much finery is only required to hide their defects, and that beauty’s real triumph is to shine alone.  The love of fashion is contrary to good taste, for faces do not change with the fashion, and while the person remains unchanged, what suits it at one time will suit it always.

If I saw a young girl decked out like a little peacock, I should show myself anxious about her figure so disguised, and anxious what people would think of her; I should say, “She is over-dressed with all those ornaments; what a pity!  Do you think she could do with something simpler?  Is she pretty enough to do without this or that?” Possibly she herself would be the first to ask that her finery might be taken off and that we should see how she looked without it.  In that case her beauty should receive such praise as it deserves.  I should never praise her unless simply dressed.  If she only regards fine clothes as an aid to personal beauty, and as a tacit confession that she needs their aid, she will not be proud of her finery, she will be humbled by it; and if she hears some one say, “How pretty she is,” when she is smarter than usual, she will blush for shame.

Moreover, though there are figures that require adornment there are none that require expensive clothes.  Extravagance in dress is the folly of the class rather than the individual, it is merely conventional.  Genuine coquetry is sometimes carefully thought out, but never sumptuous, and Juno dressed herself more magnificently than Venus.  “As you cannot make her beautiful you are making her fine,” said Apelles to an unskilful artist who was painting Helen loaded with jewellery.  I have also noticed that the smartest clothes proclaim the plainest women; no folly could be more misguided.  If a young girl has good taste and a contempt for fashion, give her a few yards of ribbon, muslin, and gauze, and a handful of flowers, without any diamonds, fringes, or lace, and she will make herself a dress a hundredfold more becoming than all the smart clothes of La Duchapt.

Good is always good, and as you should always look your best, the women who know what they are about select a good style and keep to it, and as they are not always changing their style they think less about dress than those who can never settle to any one style.  A genuine desire to dress becomingly does not require an elaborate toilet.  Young girls rarely give much time to dress; needlework and lessons are the business of the day; yet, except for the rouge, they