The Sun.
London, England, 1827-07-26 00:00:00

VANITY SUPERIOR TO PAIN.

(From Bkickwood's Magazine for July.)

Every boy and girl have read of the woad-
stained bodies and tatooed skins of the long-
haired progenitors of the ...9.p-Dices and Cad-
walladers. But authors differ as to the im-
portant question, whether beauty ' or terror was
the object of this barbaric finery ? What a sen-
sation would such a costume produce at a fancy-
ball ! A dance of ancient Britons, habited, or
rather unhabited, in antique uniform, would
secure the success of a inelo-drame—and, under
the rose, I intend to try it myself in a grand
spectacle, which I shall acknowledge when it has
run thirty nights. One thing I will maintain,
that this painted and sculptured nudity was
neither more indecorous nor less becoming, than
fifty fashions of later date. Towards the end of
the 15th and commencement of the 16th cen-
tury-, the dress of our beaux was not only insuffi-
cient for the ends of clothing, but furnished with
appendages which cannot be named, much less
described, without gross indelicacy. The Cal-
lipygian devices of our fair ones have not es-
caped severe animadversion ; and the ladies seem
but, lately to have discovered the just medium
between too much and too little covering. Let
it not be said, that these matters are too light for
serious criticism, seeing that more than one
Father has shown a most intimate acquaintance
with the most sacred arcane of the toilet. Saints
have declaimed against head-gear—the martyred
Latimer preached 'upon caps and bonnets ; and
the pious Baxter wrote a treatise on the "
loveliness of Love Locks." As for the ques-
tion of taste, symmetry, and the beau ideal, were
not the immeasurable trunk-breethes of the ca-
valiers, often containing stuff' enough for the poor
of a parish—the various aggregations of false hair
known under the name of perriwigs—the deep
cuffs, long-flapped waistcoats, and other volumi-
nous absurdities of the old court, not to mention
the pointed shoes buckled to the knee, which
were restrained by statute in the reign of Richard
IL—the stays and pillories of dandyism--and a
hundred like monstrosities of mode, as irrecon-
cilable with the xe;:,ss as the serpents, ravenous
birds, and ill-shaped fishes, which constituted
the regimentals of a Silurian or Brigantine war-
rior ? The Lady-Britons, blues as they were,
observed a distinction, which I would gladly see
enforced among their lovely posterity. The skins
of the matrons were embroidered with figures ap-
propriate to the dignity of wives and mothers—
such as dragons, lions, suns, moons, and stars ;
while the pretty persons of the young virgins
were garnished all over with the effigies of fair
herbs Ind flowers which (as a quaint old histo-
rian saith) could not but yield, though a strange,
-vet no unpleasing aspect. Now this distinction
showed good taste, and good feeling. It is a
dire perplexity in modern times, that you cannot
learn, without asking impertinent questions,
whether any female you chance to meet in stage-
coach or steam-packet is maid, wife, or widoa—
and a scandal to our manners, that a woman who
is Slie mother of children, may dress herself as
airily, as temptingly, as a miss that has to look
out for it .husband. Now, though I am, by pre-
destination ae'd election, foreordained to a final
perseverance ii celibacy, I think a wife and
mother the most vetefTable thing on earth, and
in consequence, bound, ait.,sove every creature, to
venerate herself. If we sholz.ld be offended to
see an archdeacon in the costume Of a huntsman,
or a parish priest in the undress of a hosaar,—
much more justly may we censure any incon-
gruous levity in a female, whom the matrimonial
and maternal character sets far above the sanctity
a Bishop, Priest, or Deacon.
Yet such is my compassion for the very frailties
of the sex, that I would not, at least foe a first
offence, refuse the virgin livery to such unfortu-
nates, as had loved not wisely, but too well.—
How the Britons acted in these cases, we are
not informed ; but their morals do not seem to
have be,:en very austere.

Their 44:5rifYing or tatooing seems to have
been a very p,sinful operation. We might be
puzzled to accomist for such fortitude in the ser-
vice of vanity, whicci nevertheless lacks not its
parallel in the annals of C.vilizetl fashion. Men,
even men who in passive enat:.rance fall far short
of their sisters, have been known !o bleep or lie
awake with a plate of lead on their foreheads,
lest the lines thereon might slander them 4vith
thinking. The tortures which many of both
sexes have undergone for the removal of bodily
defects, no way inconvenient, but only unsightly—
might do honour to an inquisitor. I read not
long since of an heroic dandy, who permitted his
mis-shapen leg-bone to be filed and scraped by
an ignorant quack, till his life was in imminent
danger. Who does not know that the order of
Jesoits owes its foundation (under Satan) to the
persons! vanity of Ignatius Loyola, and his am-
bition to be like the Homeric warriors—belie
ccreatus? Had loose boots, or cossack trowsers,
been the fashion, Loyola might have died without
the odour of sanctity—and the name of Jesuit
had never been heard for reproach or for praise.
To sucL slight occasions are mighty agencies
debted for their first motion. The process of
putting a.danAly shoe upon the foot of a gallant
in the age of Loyola, is detailed in a very curious
extract among the votes to-Southey's tale of Pa-
raguay, a book well svoTth purchasing,—were it 1
for the notes alone. This shin-galling mode
seems to have extended to 1700a:1d—for it is
mentioned among the accomplishments of Poins,
that he wears his boot very smooth like the sign
of the leg. Did it suggest to the facetious Lau-
derdale-and his colleagues in the Council of State,
the punishment of the boot, inflicted on the poor
7vandering covenanters?
Vanity, it seems, will make man endure almost
as touch as seal. After such. instances of self-
torn-ions, it tray appear like an anti-climax to
allude to the
tight lacing of our grandmothers,
the diet and medicines taken to preserve the de-
licacy of compfelcion;--the painful twisting of the
hair—" the paper-durance and double loads of
lead," which tender virgins yet endure—the
headache which must have assailed the " towered
Cybeles" of the last cantury beneath thgtr tiers
of curls and bushels of powder—the constrained
attitudes—the sticks and back-hoards of modern
boarding-schools--or the numberiese secrets
never divulged to man, by which females in
every age, and of every age, purchase imaginary
comeliness at the expence of real comfort.
Were it not unfashionable to moralise, I might
here remark, how the very follies .and fopperies
of mankind bear witness to the existence of a
nobler immaterial principle, still urging them to
treat their bodies as their slaves, their property,
and not their very selves. For it• is not to be
forgotten, that the vanity of person, the pride of
fashion, the desire of admiration, the dread of
singularity, or whatever else may have prompted
these practices, however reprehensible in its
excess, is still an intellectual, not a sensual prin-
ciple,. The Hindoo who reclines upon couch
;of spi}ce-3 ; the nun who wears sackcloth, and
heds on Ofals that famine might cast the gorge