The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-04 00:00:00

on their side. All the black races in Africa, all the
Chinese and Japanese, all the natives of India, as
we learned to our cost during the mutiny,
and probably the Russians and Turks, when
they get a chance of doing so unobserved—all
practise warfare upon the uncivilised plan. They
give full rein to their evil passions, and look upon
war as mere murder and malicious mischief on a
large scale. The more murder and the more mis-
chief, therefore, that can be committed, the more
successful the war has been. The result for which
the combatants fight is not to arrive at a permanent
and peaceful settlement, but merely to indulge their
minds with the grateful reflection that they have
inflicted a large amount of exquisite pain and misery
upon their antagonists. The pangs of those whom
they have killed ani wounded, the privations of
those whom they hate made destitute, the mental
agony of those whom they have dishonoured, these
are the trophies their valour carries off and the
prizes for which theyrisk their lives. The exploits
which the Federate ere performing on this system
of warfare would not have attracted much notice if
if they had begun by being the sort of people from
whom such things wore to be expected. But they
began upon the European, not upon the Red Indian
principle, and they st 11 use the language of civilised
belligerents. They only descended gradually to
their present ferocity, though the gradations have
undoubtedly followed each other quickly. At first,
outrages were disavowed or explained away. (Col.
Turchin's proceedings at Athens were rebuked at
the time, and after the lapse of a few months the
tale was contradicted altogether and treated as a
myth. General Butler's proclamation was ex-
plained away, and a sense put upon it which it
could not possibly bear. The horrible murder per-
petrated by General M'Neill was apologised for, and
the Washington Goverment was excused for ne-
glecting to take notice of it on the plea that Gen.
M'Neill was serving his own State, and not the
general Government. The next step was to inflict
unnecessary devastation, but to do so under the
plea of military necessity—as where a district as
large as Scotland was laid under water by cutting
the banks of the Mississippi. Now we have ad-
vanced a step further still. The wanton outrages
which are committed are no longer denied, or ex-
plained away, or excused as inevitable—they are
claimed as a triumph, and reported as a sufficient
result of a costly expedition. Sherman and
Kilpatrick count up, not merely the roads or rail-
ways or enemy's stores they have destroyed—but
the corn they have burnt, the fields they have laid
waste, the farmhouses and mills and villages they
have reduced to ashes; and they do this without a
word of rebuke from their government or from the
party that supports their Government. It is argued
that the destruction of food and of the means of
raising it has the effect of weakening the Confede-
racy by diminishing its resources. The same argu-
ment would justify any kind of barbarity practised'
under the pretence of war. The slaughter of un-
armed peasants tends to lessen the resources of the
enemy's ceilanriPtion. The ill-treatment or the
slaughter of we' men tends to prevent the increase
of the enemy's p lati o. u —in other words, the
resources of his conscript ton seventeen or eighteen
years hence. Even the feax:cul crimes for which
Cipriano and Giona La Gala 11:: v© recently been
mig ht be
condemned to death in Southern ei`.lls'
defended with perfect consistency by per Ons war-
ring on the principle of the Yankees. If it le- to be
once assumed that the object of inconveniencing an
enemy will justify wanton devastation of private
property and the slaughter of non-combatants, it is
difficult to deny the right of terrfying a population
from aiding an enemy by the infliction of appalling
punishments. The proclamations that are reported
to have been found upon Colonel Dahlgren would
seem to show that the Yankees have themselves dis-
covered the logical deduction. The order to burn
Richmond was bad enough—worthy of the Govern-
ment that did its best to set fire to the commercial
port of the town of Charleston, because the fortified
part refused to capitulate. But the order to kill
Jefferson Davis is something more than detestable.
It strikes the reader as much with amazement as it
does with horror. If we are to believe in the
authenticity of a story which has not, we
regret to say, yet received any satisfactory
disproof, it is a marking-point in the his-
tory of the degradation of public opinion in the
Northern States, showing how far they have
drifted from the landmarks of civilised morality.
It would be hard to find a parallel in the history of
Europe. The most brutal and bloody generals that
have cursed the world have never attempted to
carry on war by murdering the Sovereign of their
enemies, Suwarrow, Davoust, were unscrupulous
enough, and cared little how far they stretched the
laws of war, or trampled upon the feelings of hu-
manity. But no such crime as this was ever laid
to their charge. We must go back to the massacre
of St. Bartholomew or the murder of William
the Silent in order to find a parallel in the history
of Europe. And even in these cases the black task
was entrusted to conspirators or assassins. The
very darkness in which the principal actors were
shrouded was a concession of the turpitude of their
act—a homage t.) the moral sense of mankind. It
has been reserved for a Yaukee commander to pre-
scribe the assassination of a rival ruler as a mili-
tary duty, and to give directions for its effective
execution fig a general order. In three years the Fe-
derals have perted so far from the ways of thought
which are follow,
ea in the rest of Christendom that
they not only do wi;et other men deem monstrous
and horrible, but they Lave ceased to recognise in
such conduct anything thai is blameworthy or even
exceptional.
THE SPECTATOR ON ROUGE „ND PEARL POW-
DER.—An odd little book has fallen in our way
suggesting a curious difficulty in our inodern social
ethics. The work, or rather pamphlet, calls itself
a hand-book for ladies' maids, but is 'Telly, we
suspect, intended for a very different class—tor the
factory girls, and servant girls, and girls in the
country whose passion it is to look like ladies, and
who do not quite know how. The compiler, who
says he is much indebted to some French original,
is apparently honest enough, really understands
the virtue of clean water, and plenty of it, and has
acquired some distant idea of the value of strong
rough towelling. We might take him for an
apothecary but that he seems to be afflicted with a
sort of ladies'-maid conscience, and to feel a neces-
-e for apologising for some of his own recipes.
He e:natiates upon the advantages of different
methods'
f dressing the hair with a gusto which
nerfumer, and is positively subtle in
suggests the k 9
draws between " Bertha's plaits"the distinctions hs;
le Antoinette," the " Alex-
and the " sty
clustering, the "trellis
andra" and " Solferino
coiffure" and a marvellous .errangement which, as
he says, " suits only a very ma..:ked style of coun-
tenance," and " would injure a verb
which is called the "Charlemagne." .
open face," and
He is placidly
cheerful about the removal of wrinkles .a nasty
process of " filling in" with a mixture of whie's wax,
spermaceti, rosewater, and " balm of Tolu," and gives
without preface or comment a recipe
b y forthee wover
iug freckles, which, we venture to say,
is entirely delusive ; but he is distressed at- the ap-
ay,
plication of beer to the hair, a practice which, he
says, is very common and very dirty, and is posl-
- vexed with himself for suggesting the best
kinds of rouge and pearl powder. He is careful to
premise that health is the best cosmetic, and that
cold water clears the skin better than any prepara-
tion, and is extremely anxious that cosmetics should
be used enly during the day. His " patrons," he
fears, may sleep in them, and that will injure their
" transpiration." He even warns all readers that
the use of "pearl white" may lead to paralysis, as
its basis is white lead ; but, having satisfied his con-
science by these remarks, he proceeds to give ail the
receipts, including the dangerous one, with most
painstaking minuteness. As a further salvo, how-
ever, he places in front of his long list a prepa.
ration which he declares to be absolutely
safe, and which we quote for the final
line, a delicious specimen of would.be artistic
reasoning. "One of the safest plans 'for colouring
the cheeks, and which is effected without either
deadening the akin or impeding the necessary trans-
piration, is to take a fragment of bright crimson
silk, and having dipped it in strong spirits of wine,
to rub it over the cheeks till a moderate tint is
apparent on the skin. The great value of this com-
plexion aid is its transparency, for it admits of the
increase of colour by the natural mode of blushing."
Clearly the writer believes that though a decoction
of ribbon is justifiable and rouge and pearl powder
are used, and perhaps must be used, by people of
every grade, there is something a little wrong in
using them, something which though not exactly
wicked has a flavour of immorality about it, and
requires defence or apology. Middle class society,
in Europe at least, pretty mulish agrees with him,
and though it buys cosmetics every clay, and uses
them every night, thinks it necessary to deny their
propriety, and blame under its breath the people
who visibly employ them. There is a dislike of
" paint" in all European nations, more especially
among the lower classes, which seems as strong as
an instinct, and the presumption in favour of in-
stincts is almost always great. Yet it is very hard to
prove that there is any moral or social reason against
the use of cosmetics, or any reason at all stronger
than the disrepute brought on the practice by its
prevalence among the disreputable classes of society.
Why should a woman who may wear purchased
hair without reproach, or fill up gaps in her teeth,
or use almost any conceivable device in the way of
dress, be ashamed to admit that she brightens the
colour on her cheek or smooths an otherwise fur-
rowed forehead p Yet there is no doubt that she is
ashamed, and as little that the feeling is not alto-
ther conventional. It is not because of the injury
to health, for though men may one day learn to con-
eider the habitual disregard, of eaniwy laws as a

crime approaching to suicide, opinion has not yth
been cultivated up to that point of refinement or
precaution. Nor is it because of the physical nasti-
ness of all these modes of adornment, tor the recipe
we have given is net nasty, and those who use it
would be lust as ashamed of acknowledging its use
as of discussing the merits of their pearl
powder.
Nor does it spring from the idea suggested by the
handbook which has been the occasion of these re-
marks that cosmetics are " unfashionable," for they
are fashionable or otherwise by fits and starts, while
the discredit attached to their use is permanent--
has hardly varied even in intensity since the days
of Charles the First. The only apparent reason for
a condemnation so exceptional is that costeleiies are
deceits, that they involve an acted falsehood, and
ought, therefore, to be avoided as strictly as any
other lie. That rule, however sound enough in
itself, is rather capriciously applied, for nobody
objects to a wig, though a gentle ridicule attaches
to its concealment, and people talk readily about
false teeth, even when they are employed for " de-
ception," and not simply to preserve the health.
Nobody either rebukes devices in dress which involve
far more of deceit, thinks of condemning tight lacing
except as a stupid practice, or feels morally indig-
nant because tailors and milliners alike know the
use and abuse of padding. Nor can the feeling
spring from an old religious belief, a relic of
Catholic teaching and Puritan opinion, for the old
divines blamed extravagant shapes for the hair, andt
low dresses, and vanity generally, quite as bitterly
as they condemned rouge ; yet all their rules on
these points are broken without a thought of shame.
Yet there must be a principle somewhere at the
bottom of this as of every other prejudice, and the
unconscious feeling of society seems to be something
like this :—All men and women are bound to
conceal any deformity, and have a right to look
as well as they can, provided they keep within
the law which tacitly enforces honesty even
upon the toilette. Everybody has a right to glass
eyes, for an empty socket gives pain, or to conceal
baldness, because baldness in some men and all
women is a deformity, and deformities are un-
pleasant, and unpleasant things are never to be
paraded. Everybody has a right also to-day to
wear false hair, because everybody knows that with
existing coiffures there must be falsity, and so there
is no deception. So there exits a claim to supplY
a wanting tooth, for that does but maintain the
appearance nature had originally given. But no
one has a right to add a totally new quality, to
assert, as it were, a beauty which nature had not
given, and for a man to wear stays, or a brunette
pearl powder, is equally objectionable, the covering
in both cases involving the social guilt of deception,
and in a greater or less degree the moral guilt of
falsehood. Nobody objects to an actress wearing
rouge, because all actresses wear it, and there is no
deception, but worn in a room it involves a false-
hood both as to appearance and to age.
It is a weak explanation that, when all is
said, but it is the only one which meets the
visible ethical difficulty. Men of the modern
school all reject the old notion of mortifying personal
vanity, they all admit that it is the business of
women to look as well as ever they can, and yet they
all instinctively feel that even if pearl powder makes
them look better pearl powder ought not to be worn.
Even a hairdresser writing for ladies' maids on the
art of suppressing pimples, and therefore in the,
position best allows a cynical regard for his " art,''
and his art only, still acknowledges that the instinct
somehow worries his mind. Why ?