The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-07-31 00:00:00

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AND GENERAL COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER.

i which beset Betty the housemaid, which render Molly
the cook intolerable, and Henrietta the tirewoman
ridiculous. True, the peculiarities of each are marked
by distinctive features, which clearly indicate the real
ownership of tach; but on examination these will be
found not more widely different than the petite nez
retranse which distinguishes the latter from the
Grecian contour cf her mistress, or marks the portly
rotundity o f cookey from the towering embonpoint and
made majesty of the grand Dorothea. Convincing and
interesting illustration " of all that sort of thing," as
our author would say, is to be found scattered with no
stinted freedom throughout the pages of the book ;
but, besides these, there are other and more valuable to
be found abundantly within their snowy margins. The
beautiful ,style of life and scene painting, in the pur-
suit of which Dickens is so justly esteemed a master,
found in Leigh Hunt an early and an able practitioner.
His delineations of manners are instinct with that fine
appreciation of minute shades in character which, by
judicious application, constitute so peculiar a charm in
the displays of social life ; and without which indi-
vidual portrait becomes, in a great degree, caricature.
While tastefully playful in his mode of handling those
points of social and personal character, he is not less
happily s)ortive in treating of the vagaries which, from
time to time, have been allowed to rule the choice of
costume; leading the votaries of fashion now into one
absurdity, now into another. On these points, as on
I the happy arrangement of trivial plots for the purpose
of bringing about events important to the actors
themselves, Mr. Hunt is great. His serious gossip
upon such subjects is nearly as far removed from
twaddle as the nature of the case- will admit of. In
all of these, however, the quaint humour, the lively
fancy, and the innate sagacity of the observer are
finely manifested, and the picture which these are
united to produce has generally its intention pointed
out, and its value heightened, by some sly hit
ingeniously planted at the time it receives its finishing
stroke from the hand of the artist. Female fashions,
and the varying as well as frequently fantastic forms
which they are occasionally made to assume, engage
especially the attention of Mr. Hunt, who touches
upon them with a delicacy of satire scarcely less
pleasing than it is uncommon. He fancifully dilates
upon a fashion of female costume, which, prevailing in
the days of great grandmothers, was presumed to have
been interred with the hair powder and otshions ; the
patches and the paint, our management )f which, in
those days, constituted so important a prtion of a
lady's toilet, and which threatens, like th) " buried
majesty of Denmark," to revisit " the glimises of the
moon. Mr. Hunt, after a pleasant introduclion, thus
discourses of
A LADY'S PROGRESS IN HER HOOP.

The hoop, like any other habiliment, was only ugly ikismuch
as it interfered with the mind's idea of the body's sha)e. It
was ugly, when it made the hips appear dislocated, tlb body
swollen, the gait unnatural ; in other words, as long as it
suggested the idea of some actual deformity, and mighthave
been considered as made to suit it. But when it was llrge,
and the swell of it hung at a proper distance from the perm,
it became, not an habiliment, but an enclosure. The persm
stood aloof from it, and was imagined to do so. The lady, the
a goddess, was half concealed in a hemisphere ; out of whicl
the rest of her person rose, like Venus out of the billows
When she moved, and the hoop was of proper length as well
as breadth, she did not walk;—her steps were not visible ;
she was borne: along ; she was wafted ; came gliding. So
issued the Wortley Montagus, the C,oventrys, and the Harveys,
out of their sedans ; and came radiant with admirations of
beholders, through avenues of them at palace doors. Thus,
poor Marie-Antoinette came, during the height of her bloom
and ascendancy, through arrays, on either side, of guards and
adorers ; and swept along with her the eyes and the reforma-
tions of Mr. Burke.

Having thus gracefully disposed of the hoop, let us
take a glance at our author's skill in managing the
denouement of a love case, in which a young lady con-
trives to escape from the importunities of a lover se-
lected for her by her parents, and to throw herself