Page images
PDF
EPUB

gros grain broché de la même couleur; mais la plus grande partie étaient à carreaux de couleurs sur fond blanc. Entre autres garnitures de ce genre, nous citerons deux chapeaux en paille d'Italie ornés de deux plumes blanches avec le bout lilas, et de rubans à carreaux lilas et blancs. Un autre chapeau en paille avait une seule plume couleur paille et le bout d'un jaune très-foncé, les rubans quadrillés dans les mêmes nuances.

Les passes des chapeaux en paille d'Italie sont assz grandes et basses vers les joues; elles s'évasent d'une manière un peu plus arrondie que l'été dernier, ce qui découvre tres-bien les ornemens que l'on met dessous; les formes sont de moyenne hauteur, formant moins la pointe vers le haut et sans inclination déterminée, c'està-dire qu'il s'en voyait autant rejetées un peu en arrière que penchées sur le devant.

Sous ces chapeaux on voyait des coques de rubans arrangées de plusieurs genres les unes descendant le long des joues, les autres formant touffes de chaque côté des tempes; ou bien une ruche, ou un cordon de petites coques de rubans.

A ces ornemens de rubans se joignait une petite dentelle de soie, qui quelquefois se trouvait tendue sur le front, et formait écaille des deux côtés. Au lieu de blonde, nous avons remarqué quelques chapeaux sous lesquels se trouvait un point d'Angleterre très-léger.

Quant aux fleurs sous la passe, elles semblaient réservées aux pailles de riz, et étaient disposées si légèreinent, qu'elles perdaient tout rapport avec les bouquets un peu lourds que l'on a portés jusqu'ici.

Beaucoup de chapeaux en étoffes étaient ornés d'un demi-voile de blonde.

Sur des chapeaux en paille de riz; ornés de fleurs et de rubans de gaze, on remarquait des demi-voiles en dentelle de soie. Ce dernier genre de voile est très à la mode, et nous rappelons à cette occasion que ce fut M. Violard qui créa la première composition de ces dentelles admises même avec les toilettes d'été.

On voyait beaucop de chapeaux en étoffe de soie lilas, vert clair ou rose, brochés et glacés de blanc, ce qui avait un reflet, très-doux; ces chapeaux avaient pour ornemens des branches de fleurs très simples et peu confuses. En général, les garnitures des chapeaux sont trés-peu chargées.

Des capotes en gros d'été, couleur écrue très-claire ornés de rubans écossais roses et écrus, d'une rose sur le côté et d'un voile de dentelle de soie ou de point d' Angleterre cousu au bord, étaient destinées à de trèsjolies toilettes.

On voyait aussi beaucoup de chapeaux en étoffe de soie toute blanche, avec une plume blanche très-belle.

Les couleurs dominantes pour les chapeaux étaient le lilas paille, violette de Parme, rose ou vert clair.

De trés-jeunes femmes avaient des chapeaux en pail. le de riz ornés d'un seul nœud de ruban écossais rose et blanc, placé sur le côté, et ayant des bouts assez longs pour retomber sur la passe. Le dessous de la passe doublé en erèpe rose. Aucun ornement dessous.

Beaucoup de chapeaux trés-élégans n'avaient sous la passe aucun ornement, mais il était à remarquer que cette simplicité n'était adoptée que par les femmes trèsjolies.

Quelques capotes en coulisses en crépe rose, ornées de branches de clochettes blanches sur le côté, et d'une petite garniture de blonde posée gracieusement sous la passe, étaient jolies.

On a revu encore des mantelets en gros grain blanc, doublés de florence, et garnis de dentelle de soie blanche qui étaient portés avec de jolies robes en soie de couleur. Ces mantlets sont très-élégans et peu nombreaux. Il faut tont-à-fait une toillette de riche équipage pour les adopter.

Ce qui était aussi très-nouveau, c'étaient des mantil. les en tulle noir, autour desquelles étaient brodées en relief des fleurs de toutes couleurs. Cette broderie, cxécutée en petit ruban, paraît très-solide et a beaucoup d'éclat. Une blonde noir eutour ces mantilles,

Ce

Une mode que Lonchamps vient consolider pour tout l'été, est celle des larges rubans dits étoles, ou rubansécharpes, que les femmes portent en guise de sautoir ou d'écharpe. Ces rubans sont de toutes couleurs, unis, bariolés, écossais, brochés, peints; on en voit en gros grain uni, aux deux extrémités desquels est brodé en soie un bouquet ou une palme de diverses couleurs. gracieux accessoir de la toilette, qui eut sa première apparition chez M. Chavy-Pussey, rappelle en cet instant combien ces magasins sont riches en assortimens de rubans de tous genres. Les écossais s'y trouvent dans tout leur innombrable choix, et les rubans pour garnitures de chapeaux, tours de cous, ceintures, etc., y sont en si grand nombre et dans des goûts si neufs et si variés que l'on ne peut être étonné de la vogue acquise depuis un an par ces jolis magasins.

On fait la plupart des robes en redingotes avec corsage drapé et pélerine ouverte. La redingote se trouve maintenant sortie de la coupe négligée qui la reléguait pour les toilettes du matin. Nous avons remarqué des redingotes de très-jolies coupes que nous avions vu exécuter chez Mme. Caroline Chartier, dont le talent pour la grâce des robes s'est fait toujours remarquer avantageusement.

Comme ensembles de toilette, nous n'en citerons aujourd'hui que quelques-uns, ne voulant pas exposer à trop de confusion la mémoire di nos lectrices.

Robe en poult de soie ogive, couleur écrue, carreaux marqués par des lignes satinées, bleu pâle, chapeau paille d'Italie orné d'une plume blanche. Mantille en gros de Tours blanc, garnie de dentelle de soie. Bottines de satin couleur écrue.

Redingote en mousseline de laine fond blanc, semée de branches de corail rouge et noir. Double pélerine pareille, liserée rouge et noir; le devant du jupon fermé par cinq nœuds de rubans rouges brochés noir, et étole du même genre. Un superb collet en mousseline des Indes couvert de broderie, et garni d'un haut point d'Angleterre. Capote en paille de riz ornée d'une branche de lilas blanc,

Une redingote en gros de Naples écossais vert et blanc, laissant voir un jupon de mousseline brodée jusqu'a la ceinture. Large ceinture verte, et blanche, nouée et à bouts flottans. Corsage uni sur lequel retombait un immense collet en dentelle de soie ayant double garniture, et attaché au cou par un large camée. Chapeau de paille de riz orné de clématites et d'un voile de dentelle.

Quelques femmes qui n'avaient pu se résigner à ensevelir leur jolie toilette sous un énorme cachemire, portaient de charmans schalls d'été dits schalls Bosphore, sans doute parce que les reflets de leur coleur douce, changeante et vaporeuse rappellent les songes fantastiques que Morphée inventa dans la grotte du Bosphore.

MISCELLANEA.

A Country Town.-A country town is awake only once a week, and this is on the market day. Pass through it at any other time, and you see indeed the shops open, and the houses open, and the people, some of them, walking about with their eyes open; but the shops and the houses and the people are all asleep. The few that you see walking about look as if they knew not whither they are going, what they are doing, or why they are out of doors. The shops are as cold and as still as pictures. You see all manner of things in the windows, which seem as if they had been in the same state ever since the flood, for some of the goods are old-fashioned enough to have come out of Noah's ark, and you see the shop-keeper standing at his door, not looking for customers, for that would be a vain and hopeless employment, but merely gaping for something to fill his vacant eyes withal; and should a neighbour happen to be sauntering by, he stops for a bit of chat; so these two, propping their backs against the wall and thrusting their hands into their breeches pockets, talk for a while about things in general, and when they are tired they part; the lounger crawls down the street seeking for somebody else to gossip with and the shopkeeper goes yawning into his shop, and endeavours to keep himself awake by killing flies and wasps. When the London coach passes through the town and changes horses, that is an event; it assembles together at the inn gates all the loose, idle, indolent, gaping, stating, yawning, surplus popu lation of the town, who come to look at the horses and the coach, and the coachman, and the passengers; and most admirable is the placid curiosity with which the by-standers watch the interesting process of taking off one set of horses and putting on another. The very horses seem to wonder what the people can be staring at; and when the coach is gone, so quiet is the place that you can hear the quacking of a sleepy duck, or the squeaking of a pump handle from one end of the town to the other.-Provincial Sketches: The Rival Farmers.

The Drama and its Interests.-This point brings me to the question on which you, my dear Serle, have long laboured; distinguishing yourself no less by a singleness of purpose in the advocacy of common sense, and of the rights of every man whose hard destiny it is to live by the sweat of his pen, than by fervid eloquence and the soundest judgment. Surely, excluded by a system (for I make no charge against individuals; I believe they are fully aware of the hopelessness of the present state of things) from what the legislature, in its former wisdom, intended to be the highest reward of the dramatistwhen told that the only prizes to be won at the two theatres, are, as in some of the olden games to be carried away upon horseback-when the only Pegasus of the patent theatres is to be found in the mews of Mr. Ducrow-it is too much to ask from the government an assured retreat, where the waiter and the actor may pursue their calling, safe from the "armed heels; of bays and piebalds. It is no answer for our opponents to tell us there are, for the exercise of the art of the dramatist and the player, the minor theatres. Those establishments, with only two exceptions, are at the mercy of the common informer ;every night, through the patricians of the lands by their patronage, countenance the illegality, their licenses, are forfeited. Thus they are insecure in their tenure, and even when licensed by the Lord Chamberlain, are trammelled by absurd fallacies; though in sorrow I say it, there is no public functionary whose orders are so constantly evaded, as are the mandates of the royal key-bearer. His Lordship says there shall be six songs in each act of every burletta; and the due number are constantly sent to the Deputy Licenser (nay I know a recent instance in which the verses were selected from the Works of the deputy himself) who pockets the fee, with a full conviction that in five out of six instances, not one of the songs will be retained, but were merely sent to cheat the unsuspecting Chamberlain !—Mr Jerrold's dedication of the Schoolfellows.

Auburn and Golden Hair.-Ovid and Anacreon, the two greatest Masters of the ancient world in painting external beauty, both seem to have preferred auburn to golden, notwithstanding the popular cry in the other's favour: unless, indeed, the hair they speak of is too dark in its ground for anburn. The Latin poet, in his fourteenth love-elegy, book first, speaking of tresses which he says Apollo would have envied, and which he prefers to that of Venus. as Apelles painted her, tells, us, that they were neither black nor golden, but mixed, as it were of both. And he compares them to

cedar on the declivities of Ida, with the bark stripped. This implies a dash of tawny. I have seen pine trees, in a southern evening sun, take a lustrous burnished aspect, between dark and golden, a good deal like what I conceive to be the colour he alludes to. Anacreon describes hair of a similar beauty. His touch, as usual, is brief and exquisite :

“Deepening inwardly, a dun; Sparkling golden, next the sun." Which Ben Jonson has rendered in a line,

"Gold upon a ground of black."

Perhaps, the true anbaru is something more Instrous throughout, and more metallic than this. The cedar with the bark stripped looks more like it. At all events, that is not the golden hair of the ancients has been proved to me beyoud a doubt, by a memorandum in my possession worth a thousand treatise of the learned. This is a solitary hair of the famous Lucretia Borgia, whom Ariusto has so praised for her virtues, and whom the rest of the world is so contented to call a wretch. It was given me by a wild acquaintance [Lord Byron], who stole it from a lock of her hair preserved in the Ambrosian library at Milan. On the envelope he put a happy

motto:

"And beauty draws us with a single hair" If ever hair was golden, it is this. It is not red, it is not yellow, it is not anburn: it is golden, and nothing else; and though natural-looking too, must have had a surprising ap pearance in the mass. Lucretia, beautiful in every respect, must have looked like a visiou in a picture, au angel from the Everybody who sees it, cries out, and pronounces it the real thing. I must confess, after all, I prefer the auburn, as we construe it. It forms, I think, a finer shade for the skin;

sun.

a richer warmth; a darker lustre. But Lucretia's hair must have been still divine. Wat Salvan (Mr. W. S. Landor), a man of genius whom I became acquainted with over it, as other acquaintances commence over a bottle, was inspired on the occasion with the following verses :

"Borgia, thon once wert almost too august,
And high for adoration;-now thou'rt dust!
All that remains of thee these plaits infold-
Calin hair, meand'ring with pellucid gold!”
New Monthly Mag.

A Modest and Benevolent Poet.—When Santeuil produced any verses that particularly pleased him, he used to say that he most repair to the bridges and give orders that they might be chained immediately, for fear his brother poets might throw themselves into the river.

A hunter, while in pursuit of a deer, fell into one of those deep, funnel-shaped pits, formed on the prairies by the settling of the waters after heavy rains, and known by the name of sink-holes To his great hortor, he came in contact, at the bottom, with a huge grizzly bear. The monster grappled him : a deadly contest ensued, in which the poor hunter wes severely torn and bitten, and had a leg and an arm broken, but succeeded in killing his rugged toe. For several days he remained at the bottom of the pit, too much crippled to move, and subsisting on the raw flesh of the bear; during which time he kept his wounds open. that they might heal gradually an effectually. He was at length enabled to scramble to the top of the pit, and so out upon the open prairie. With great danculty he crawled to a ravine, formed by a stream then nea ly dry. Here he took a delicious draught of water, which intused new life into him; then dragging himself along, from pool to pool, he supported himself by smali fish and trogs. One day he saw a wolf hunt down and kill a deer in thes neighbouring prairie. He immediately crawled forth from the ravine, drove off the wolf, and, lying down beside the carcass of the deer, remained there until he had made several hearty meals, by which his strength was much recruited. Returning to the ravine, he pursued the course of the brook until it grew to be a considerable stream. Down this he floated until he came to where it emptied into the Mississippi. Just at the mouth of the stream he found a forked tree, which he lauched with some difficulty, and getting astride of it, committed himself to the current of the mighty river. In this way he floated along until he arrived opposite the fort at Counnil Bluffs. Fortunately he arrived there in the daytime, otherwise he might have floated unnoticed past this solitary post. and have perished in the idle waste of waters. Being descried from the fort, a canoe was sent to his relief, and he was brought to shore more dead than alive, where he soon recovered from his wounds, but remained maimed for life.-A Tour on the Prairies.

No. 54.]

THE BEAU MONDE;

OR

Monthly Journal of Fahion.

LONGEVITY.

LONDON, JUNE 1, 1835.

(From Dr. Southwood Smith's, Philosophy of Health.)

By a certain amount and intensity of misery, life may be suddenly destroyed; by a smaller amount and intensity, it may be suddenly worn out and exhausted. The state of the mind affects the physical condition; but the continuance of life is wholly dependant on the physical condition: it follows that in the degree in which the state of the mind is capable of affecting the physical condition, it is capable of influencing the duration of life.

Were the physical condition always perfect, and the mental state always that of enjoyment, the duration of life would always be extended to the utmost limit compatible with that of the organization of the body. But as this fortunate concurrence seldom or never happens, human life seldom or never measures the full number of its days. Uniform experience shows, however, that, provided no accident occur to interrupt the usual course, in proportion as body and mind approximate to this state, life is long; and as they recede from it, it is short. Improvement on the physical condition affords a foundation for the improvement of the mental state; improvement of the mental state improves up to a certain point the physical condition; and in the ratio in which this twofold improvement is affected, the duration of life in

creases.

Longevity then is good, in the first place, because it is a sign and a consequence of a certain amount of enjoyment; and, in the second place because this being the case, of course in the proportion as the term of life is extended, the sum of enjoyment must be augmented. And this view of longevity assigns the cause, and shows the reasonableness of that desire for long life, which is so universal and constant as to be commonly considered instinctive. Longevity and happiness, if not ininvariably, are generally coincident.

If there may be happines without longevity, the converse is not possible: there caunot be longevity without happiness. Unless the state of the body be that of tolerable health, and the state of the mind that of tolerable enjoyment, long life is unattainable; these physical and mental conditions no longer existing, or capable of existing, the desire of life and the power of retaining it cease together.

An advanced term of life and decrepitude are commonly conceived to be synonymous: the extention of life is vulgarly supposed to be the protraction of the period of infirmity and suffering, that period which is characterized by a progressive diminution of the power of sensation, and a consequent and porpotionate loss of the power of enjoyment the "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." But this is so far from being true, that it is not within the compass of human

NO. LIV VOL. V.

[VOL. 5.

power to protract, in any sensible degree, the period of old age, properly so called, that is, the stage of decrepitude. In this stage of existence, the physical changes that successively take place clog, day by day, the vital machinery until it can no longer play. In a space of time fixed within narrow limits, the flame of life must then inevitably expire, for the processes that feed it fail. But though, when fully come, the term of old age cannot be extended, the coming of the term may be postponed. To the preceding stage, an indefinite number of years may be added. And this is a fact of the deepest interest to human nature,

The division of human life into periods or epochs is not an arbitrary distinction, but is founded on constitutional differences in the system, dependant on different physiological conditions. The periods of infancy, childhood, boyhood, adolescence, manhood, and old age, are distinguished from each other by external characters, which are but the outward signs of internal states. In physiological condition, the infant differs from the child, the boy from the man, and the adult from the old man, as much in physical strength as in mental power. There is an appointed order in which

In

these several states succeed each other; there is a fixed time at which one passess into another. That order connot be inverted! no considerable anticipation or postponement of that fixed time can be effected. all places and under all circumstances, at a given time, though not precisely at the same time in all climates and under all modes of life, infancy passes into childhood, childhood into boyhood, boyhood into adolescence, and adolescence into manhood. In the space of two years from its birth, every infant has ceased to be an infant, and has become a child; in the space of six years from this period, every child will have become a boy; add eight years to this time, and every boy will have become a young man ; in eight years more, every young man will have become an adult man; and in the subsequent ten years, every adult man will have acquired his highest state of physical perfection. But at what period will this state of physical perfection decline? What is the maximum time during which it can retain its full vigour? Is that maximum fixed? Is there a certain number of years in which, by an inevitable law, every adult man necessarily becomes an old man? precisely the same number of years appointed for this transition to every human being? Can no care add to that number? Can no imprudence take from it? Does the physiological condition or the constitutional age of any two individuals ever advance to precisely the same point in precisely the same number of years? Physically and mentally, are not some persons older at fifty than others are at seventy? And do not instances occassionally occur in which an old man, who reached even his hundredth year, retains as great a degree of juvenility as the majority of those who attain to eighty.

VI.

Is

If this be so, what follows? One of the most interesting consequences that can be presented to the human mind. The deviation of the periods of infancy, childhood, boyhood, and adolescence, is fixed by a determinate number of years. Nothing can stay, nothing retard, the succession of each. Alike incapable of any material protraction is the period of old age. It follows that every year by which the term of human existence is extended is really added to the period of mature age; the period when the organs of the body have attained their full growth and put forth their full strength; when the physical organization has acquired its utmost perfection; when the senses, the feelings, the emotions, the passions, the affections, are in the highest degree acute, intense, and varied; when the intellectual faculties, completely unfolded and developed, carry on their operations with the utmost vigour, soundness, and continuity; in a word, when the individual is capable of receiving and of communicating the largest amount of the highest kind of enjoyment.

A consideration more full of encouragement, more animating, there cannot be. The extension of human life, in whatever mode and degeee it may be possible to extend it, is the protraction of that portion of it, and and only of that portion of it, in which the human being is capable of RECEIVING AND OF COMMUNICATING

THE LARGEST MEASURE OF THE NOBLEST KIND OF EN

JOYMENT.

Relation between the physical condition and happiness, and between happiness and longevity depends on the action of the organic organs. The action of the organic organs depends on certain physical agents. As each organic organ is duly supplied with the physical agent by which it carries on its respective progress, and as it duly appropriates what it receives, the perfection of the physical coudition is attained; and according to the perfection or imperfection of the physical condition, supposing no accident interrupt its regular course, is the length or the brevity of life.

It is conceivable that the physical condition might be brought to a high degree of perfection, the mind remaining in a state but little fitted for enjoyment; because it is necessary to enjoyment that there be a certain development, occupation, and direction of the mental powers and affections; and the mental state may be neglected, while attention is paid to the physical processes. But the converse is not possible. The mental energies cannot be fully called forth while the physical condition is neglected. Happiness presupposses a certain degree of excellence in the physical condition; and unless the physical condition be brought to a high degree of excellence, there can be no such development, occupation, and direction of the mental powers and af fections as is requisite to a high degree of enjoyment.

It

That state of the system in which the physical condition is sound, is in in itself conducive to enjoyment, while a permanent state of enjoyment is in its turn conducive to the soundness of the physical condition. is impossible to maintain the physical processes in a natural and vigorous condition if the mind be in a state of suffering. The bills of mortality contain no column exhibiting the number of persons who perish annually from bodily disease produced by mental suffering; but every one must occasionally have seen appalling examples of the fact. Every one must have observed the

altered appearance of persons who have sustained calamity. A misfortune that struck to the heart happened to a person a year ago; observe him some time afterwards; he is wasted, worn, the miserable shadow of himself; inquire about him at the distance of a few months, he is no more.

THE WELSH MINSTREL.

A HARPER sat by a tranquil stream,
And wakened his wild harp's lay;
"Twas a legend of old, a music dream,
That had nearly passed away.
For aged and feeble was he grown,
And his memory held not long;
As he rested by that river alone,

And recalled his boyhood's song.

I thought I could trace, when sad the strain,
A tear on his furrowed cheek;
But it seemed to relieve and not to pain,
So I did not move or speak.

This song revealed how a foreign maid.
Once had followed a Knight as a page,
And had never a single fear betrayed,
In the midst of the battle's rage.

It then went on, and the tone became
More pensive to my ear,

For the Knight was wedded to martial fame,
And for true love had no tear.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors]

None but an English schoolboy can form an idea of the ecstatic feelings which attend breaking-up.' The opinion that our school-days are the happiest of our existence is true in nothing but this. The delight which we experience at going home is, perhaps, almost the keenest that we feel at any period of our lives; and, probably, it is so from the very fact that those days are so little happy at other times. Who is there among us whose heart does not beat at the remembrance of the almost delirious joy in which he used to be plunged during the last week?' and, at last, when the very morning itself arrives, and he jumps into the chaise, hired weeks before, to ensure it-oh! it would be almost worth while (and it would be a heavy price) to put oneself to school again for a half-year, in order to taste the enjoyment of that hour!

With what joyful energy used a whole choir of young voices to shout out the beloved chorus of the Home Song, a verse from which I have selected as an epigraph to this chapter, Domum, domum, dulce, dulce domum! Yes, sweet and beloved, indeed, is home then! Time has not chilled us, the world has not corrupted us; as the young bird returns to its nest, so do we to our parents' arms and dwelling. And with what undoubting faith did we receive the tradition of how that

« PreviousContinue »