ITO THE EDITOR OF TEE " SPECTATOR.")
Sin,—With reference to your comment on the Ladies' Appeal to their Fellow-Countrywomen on the subject of extravagance in dress, may I be allowed to call attention to a single point which the tyranny of fashion seems to have imposed upon them? It is by no means a trifling one. You say truly that " every one works better for being smart," but the fashion to which I refer seems to me, from an artistic and aesthetic point of view, to be hostile to real smartness. I refer to the preposterously high heels which have again come into fashion. In almost every newspaper one sees illustrated advertisements of heels raised to a height that throws the foot forward beyond the true balance of the body. distorting the foot, and contributing to the ungainly motion which mars the carriage of so many women nowadays, and makes them appear to waddle rather than to walk. Man, including woman, is naturally a plantigrade animal, but it seems to be the ambition of the leaders and followers of the present unnatural and foolish fashion to approximate to the barbarous model of the Chinese lady's foot. Anatomical reasons alone should be enough, one would think, to restrain them. But i/ fcut souffrir pour 'etre belle. The only persons profited by this outrage upon Nature would seem
to be the chiropodists.—I am, Sir, &c., G. J. C.-B.
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