CURLS.
6 D EAU FY is but skin deep" say old maids ; but then who is .1.) going to tear off the skin? Beauty is harmony, after all, and perfect harmony is the highest effect even Providential care can produce. Everything, however slight, that can aid beauty towards full development, is an addition to the small modicum of happiness existing in the world, and the lightest phase of fashion has of necessity its own artistic force. We record, therefore, with hope, and not disdain, the fact that a change of fashion is possible in the matter of wearing the hair. Men, of course, are to remain as they have been for the last century, cropped like convicts, as if hair, like finger-nails and bad acquaintance, were chiefly of use for cutting. But women, it is said, are no longer to be condemned to a single fashion for the head—to bind down rich hair and thin, auburn and grey, black and flaxen, in the same Quaker plaits. According to a letter in the Scotsman, written evidently in the truest spirit of scientific research, the Princess did enter London on the 7th March with two long locks curling about her neck, and the fashion has already found numerous devotees. We fancy the Princess rather sanctioned than introduced the fashion, for the two locks had been worn before, and had received, indeed, probably from some club man, who has forgotten the time when he recognized flirtation as the primary end of woman, the sneering nickname of "follow-me-lads." Be that as it may, the innovation is one to rejoice over, for fashion had grown almost as weary as human eyes of the ex- isting mode of dressing the hair. All heads had been reduced by a tyranny which, unlike most such tyrannies, was notshort-lived, to one dead, meaningless level. Tall or short, fat or" elegant," with rich brown hair which would have delighted Titian, or with the sandy locks pleasant only in the eyes of an Arab, every woman was bound to plait her hair down in two flat bands stretching from the crown to below the ear. Of course, on some few Greek faces, needing regular lines to be in keeping with their clean cut profiles, those plaits were very becoming, and, of course, also, there were a few faces which, from innate qualities of expression—from the sunny flash, for example, which transforms some few brunettes-- could not be spoiled by any conceivable malarrangement. But all women were compelled to the same hair, as they are still coerced Into the same bonnet. The auburn wealth, which needs only to be unconfined to be perfect, but which is never seen in England
except on the beach at a watering-place, was reduced to propriety equally with the light-brown chevelure, which looks so well thrown back from the head. Even "sweet girl graduates with their golden hair," which ought to fall in a row of ring- lets round the face, half hiding blue eyes, and making pursed lips look arch from the sidelong glance they ensure, were bound in the plaits which become only black-haired or matronly heads. Pale faces, which want a setting to the portrait, and round cheeks, which need only lines to break their effect, were formalized by one and the same rule, and even damsels with high cheek-bones were unable to resist an edict which practically set those bones in a frame for all the world to admire before
they saw the face. There are three hundred thousand girls in England whose fathers pay income-tax, and they have at least three hundred thousand sorts of face ; there are at least two hundred ways of arranging the hair known to each of those girls ; and yet they were all condemned, under penalty of being pronounced odd, or peculiar, or outree, the epithet varying according to their weight in society, to wear their hair alike. The uniformity of the bonnet is bad enough, but that is arranged by milliners, and is, after all, artificial ; but to produce uniformity in hair, nature has to be twisted out of all specialty, and, therefore, all natural grace. Hair which Heaven made to curl is rebellious when man makes it straight, and many a girl spends hours in the week in curing herself effectually of one of her greatest gifts.
If the example of the Princess should amend this error only, London will be rewarded for its enthusiasm, and the nation for the 24,0001. which the ceremonial everybodyrejoiced in and nobody saw, is, we perceive, to cost. " Follow-me-lads" are not in themselves very pretty, though like any other fashion they become the Prin- cess, and they are exceedingly costly. A rich silk dress, we are told, is worth little after an evening with these curls resting upon its uppermost edge, and lace gets the aristocratic tinge a little too soon. The curls, too, alone, and therefore thin, are a little un- meaning, and spoil that richness of massy folds which constitutes, after all, that glory of woman's hair of which angels were afraid. But any innovation which is not avowedly French is a blessing, for it breaks up the curse of modern society—the taste for unifor- mity, whether in beauty or ugliness.
Why should not the reform be carried farther ? If the Princess have but the spirit, she may break up the detestable routine once and for all, and if she cannot produce the dissimilarity which nature seems to prefer—that unfashionable power making no two faces and no two leaves quite alike—she may at least give the English female world the benefit of a double standard. All possibly may not follow her, for the highest class all over Europe keeps up uniformity as a kind of test for caste, and uniformity needing a standard takes its patterns from French lorettes. But she would carry with her half the country, and a mere choice, the right to decide on the less ugly idea, would be a boon to our countrywomen. Suppose the Princess tried a bonnet reconcilable in some faint or dis- tant degree with the primary laws of art, with that one, for instance, which forbids the painter to paint an apple with a stalk twice as big as itself. Numbers might stick to the "spoon," but then people with long faces might leave it alone, while people with short faces continued the much admired design. At present both those whom it would become, if it could become anybody, and those who look in it like the faces one sees reflected in the back of a table-spoon, are equally condemned to its use. Or suppose, by a daring invasion of milliners' rules, Her Royal Highness reintroduced the only bit of real drapery this age has retained out of all the cos-
tumes its grandmothers were at pains to invent, the old three yards and tluse -quarters shawl. The courtiers of Paris might ree.oil , but the English lady would, at least, have the choice of giving herself some height and rectifying the equalizing, and therefore destructive, effect of crinoline on all figures. That privilege seems at present reserved exclusively for the old. Or suppose, if instead
of compelling the tall and the short, the plump and the scraggy, alike to dine with bare shoulders, a great example revived with modifications the beautiful Josephine dress. As Josephine wore it, it was, perhaps, a little too beautiful for English ideas or climate, but that defect any milliner would correct, and it
is in itself artistically perfect, the top of a riding habit thrown
slightly open in front. Crinoline we dare not attack, for it will not be abolished ; but suppose there were two styles, a rImperatrice, covering half a sofa, and a /a Princesse, only wide enough to give a graceful dignity to the figure without utterly concealing the form. People straight from shoulder to heel would still have their prized defence, while those whom nature has made lithe might
retain that lissom beauty which was the grace of girlhood till somebody in the interest of Sheffield developed crinoline into the "cage." It is a double standard that is required, something to break up this horrible uniformity, this dressing of women, not to set off their God-given beauty, but to sell milliners' goods ; and this the Princess, if at the prayer of her sex she will but fight for a week, can give to those who for the past month have felt the prouder for her arrival.
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