The Sun.
London, England, 1851-10-23 00:00:00

THE SIJ

pudent attempt to foist it into English usages, is
" coming it a little too strong," and must be knocked
on the head without further parley. It were, per-
haps, hard to blame those who figure in it upon
platforms for the purpose "of raising the
wind " by mountebanking for the delecta-
tion of sixpenny audiences ; yet, in one recent
instance decorum was too reprehensibly outraged
by the appearance on the boards of a hired theatre of
a Bloomer gang of some thirty conspirators against
sense and taste. Then it was, we believe, that to
cap the trash vented on the occasion, a little girl ap-
pealed in doggrel to her coevals to tease their " pa's"
and "ma's" into countenancing, even to_the purchase
thereof, the adoption of the novel dress. Potently do
we trust that the response to such onslaughts on pa-
rental indulgence will be found, in each and every
case, to consist in the application of a selection of
well-seasoned broom-twigs to the antipodes of the
visage from whose vocal organs the pert solicitation
shall have emanated. In an admirable spirit of
reasoning the champions of the cause connect the
abolition of tight-lacing with the adoption of inex-
pressibles. Now that fatally pernicious habit,
too long prevalent in the world of fashion,
has rapidly waned of late days, and is already all but
extinct ; but, in the name of all the Gods at once,
what has all that to do with casing the legs in pillow-
cases with running strings tied round the ancles ?
So with over-long street-sweeping skirts. Modifi-
cation in that particular may be favourably intro-
duced, but why must they be docked to the knee,
disproportionately and outrageously curtailed ?
Beautiful on the highways are the apparitions of
those " cutty sarks !" Picture to yourself a
sexagenarian materfamilias, tramping down the miry
street on a drizzling day in baggy breeks, rain-
saturated, clinging round her venerable understand-
ings ;or a tom-boy in her teens flaunting in motley
amidst the multitude. But, it may be said, nothing
can be objected to the innovation on the
score of immodesty. Granted—if immodesty
be but the synonym of nudity. In that point of
view, it would not be immodest for an enterprising
damsel to envelope herself in a coalsack from throat
to instep, to the rejection of all other covering. In
either case we must regard the exhibitress, if sane, as
under the influence of a frightful paroxysm of vanity,
or of an unfeminine idiosyncracy too abhorrent to
dwell on. Some person of distorted taste, such an one
as would peradventure gaze entranced on those unpa-
ralleled sculptures, the lion and unicorn, on the
Buckingham Palace-gate piers—may, through moral
obliquity of vision, be induced conscientiously to
pronounce the Bloomer integuments picturesque and
becoming. Let them be displayed to the utmost pos-
sible advantage, as in the instance of our cleverest
actress, who is nightly to be seen in the
attire. Even that fascinating and amiable
lady, on whom no assumption can sit ill,
fails, from the inherent necessity of the circumstance,
io render her personal appearance otherwise than less
favourably attractive than in any of the various roles
she has had to impersonate in the exercise of her pro-
fessional duties. And we feel confidently assured that
Miss 11Tooncin (she will pardon us for introducing
her name in junta-position with the herd in question),
would as little think of perambulating the thorough-
fares or of entering a ball-room or a drawing-room
in Bloomer costume, as PAUL BEDFORD would of
marching up Regent-street on a summer's afternoon,
arrayed in the sacerdotal robes of NoRMA.
Even in America, whose soil, fertile in prodigies,
gave birth and nurture to the Bloomerian abomination,
its development evidently meets with no general en-
couragement or applause. " One by one," remarks
the New England Washingtonian, " the ladies are
assuming all the garments of the gentlemen. Besides
standing collars and black silk cravats, they now
wear dresses fitted close to the neck, and opening in
the breast, like a military,coat, to expose a dickey'
(hence the appropriate appellation of dickey-
birds'), with ruffles, or plaits with gold studs.
By and by we shall not know our sisters
from our brothers ;" whilst the New York
correspondent of one of our morning brethren
recently writes as follows :—"We have had a great
effort made here to introduce the Bloomer garb among
our females, but it has chiefly been made by a class
of free-thinhing women, not occupying any very re-
markable position in society, but who seem deter-
mined to become objects of curiosity. I have seen
several of them in the street, but invariably they
were very ugly, ill-formed, and without the least pre-
tention to grace of manner. Ido not think there are
a dozen Bloomers in this city. The beautiful style
of dress now in fashion throws the innovation far
into the shade."

These be bitter Transatlantic pills. The she-
prophets of Bloomerism have, apparently, little honour
in their own country, and indubitably less out of it.
We now take our leave of the Brummagem
Amazons, consigning them, in dote of contumacy, to
the wholesome cudgel of our esteemed contemporary,
Punch, ever prompt to smash unrighteousness, whom
we invoke, as magister morum on such emer-
gency, to apply himself vigorously to the eradica-
tion of a noisome and unsightly fungus on the face
of society. Delenda est Bloomeria. The vile tom-
foolery must be summarily squelched.

The Roman Catholic Defence Association seems to
be alreadyi.in articulo mortis. The late meeting in
Dublin is acknowledged on all hands to have been a
dead failure, the paucity of the " rent" proves that the
clerical agitators have been unable to get the " steam
up," and that albeit aspiring advocates and dapper
drapers, ambitious of tacking to their names the
magical letters ALP., may suffer themselves to be
dragged at the chariot-wheels of the priests, and may
in return for clerical electoral influence spout fustian
from platforms, yet the Roman Catholic laity, as a
body, take no interest in the arrogant attempts of the
Ultramontane agents of a foreign faction to ride
roughshod over the rights and liberties of mankind, after
the most approved fashion of Austrian obscurantism.
The foreign agents of the foreign obscurantists could
have known little of the genius of the people of Eng-
land and of Ireland when they imagined that the bast
method of securing their sympathy was to eulogise
HAYNAU, and to retail the most absurd and atro-
cious of the Austrian invented calumnies against the
Hungarian and Italian patriots ; and when it was
announced 'ithat Cardinal WISEMAN, on his way
from Rome to England to commence the intended
aggression, had visited the Emperor of AUSTRIA en
route, the failure of the attempt became at
once evident. Every subsequent proceeding
of the intruding bishops and their adhe-
rents has tended more and more to prove
that the great bulk of the Roman Catholic laity re-
gard this attempt of the bishops to establish a sacer-
dotal despotism in the same light as do their Protes-
tant fellow-countrymen. They know, from bitter
experience, the galling yoke to which the Ultra-
montanists would fain subject them, and therefore
they hold themselves aloof from this agitation. If we
desired any fresh proof of the utterly hopeless state
of the Roman Catholic Defence Association, we
should find it in the following cry of despair, put
forth by the Ultramcntane organ, the Tablet:—
::‘l,lVixuaidaEb3l6EiNmT;
oOsi'sibTreE toDdEeFnEyN, canodAvsesroy7s
useless
.
to
conceal the fact, that the '
disposition
pf the public mind in
Ireland is very much changed
of great results from both in regard to its hopes
polit.cal
amount of confidence .struggles, and to the
public men, in Parliamentary. eit is disposed to place in
organi-
zations. Not merely de tapearties, and political organi-
press upon the minds of men andcalamities of the hour
does, but the ill-success of formerdamp their expecte-
' complete disappointment ofall the
agitations, and the
which they were attended, have strungliowing hopes by
the present time. The one thing in wiLyh reacted upon
on which we are now entering differs frome movementthath
have preceded it, consists in its religious chatreX -
the religious nature of its ends and aims;
and Tthin
active, intimate, and personal share in the manage.e
ment and direction of the Association, which, it is
hoped, will be exercised by those venerable prelates,
who (if it is to succeed) must be its real
leaders and guitics, as well as founders. We
say this out of no disrespect to the lay polit.e smallest
iciaswho
are engaged in this work, nor do we make tae
reference to their personal character. If they were
angels in virtue and wisdom, we should say exactly the
same, that by the accident of the times, that around
which the Catholic public will now rally, that which will
engage their sympathies and command their confidence,
is not _ embers of Parliament, or any class or descrip-
tion of laymen, but the bishops ofthe Church, joining
together
together to tell
that the tiusf, the 3 people that their religion is,in danger,
RESISTANCE TO vi,_°_ome FOR UNITED AND UNANIMOUS
to them the means
AGGRESSION, and pointing out
that resistance can 4,115 the principles by which
therefore look upon it, a: _ made euccessful. We
prosperous working of the absoltely essential to the
asseciation that the I?ishops