The Art of Dress. By Mrs. Haweis. (Chatto and Windus.)—This
little work forms a kind of saquel to The Art of Beauty, by the same lady. It is full of sensible remarks and wise and appropriate advice, but the title strikes one as slightly too wide for the subject, which really is the dress of English ladies. Within this limitation, there is much to be pleasantly learned in this quaintly-adorned book. But of this remark a few extracts will give a better confirmation than more comments. In a chapter on "The Power of Beauty," Mrs. Haweis says :—" Many persons are curiously sensitive to colour and shapes in surroundings, certain combinations affecting them with almost physical pain. Now, as no surroundings are so inevitable as people's clothes, dress must be held responsible for a certain amount of unintended pleasure or annoyance to others. Besides, one's own apparel is not without an influence on one's own mind. A new colour seems to bring a new atmosphere with it, and changes, oddly enough,
the level of thought." "Not that tho adorning of the body ought to engross time which belongs to other duties, or exclude more serious studies, exercise, &c. But, as we have all got to dress, it is meet and right to do our best with that amount of time we mast devote to the matter, to consider the propriety and charm of the outward being, as we all try in our several ways to consider those of our inner selves; and with a very little study of tho right and wrong in dress, the results are found to be fully worth the effort." Again, on "Taste," she says, "Everything without purpose is without beauty." "And although everything that has a
purpose cannot en revanche be called beautiful, yet appropriateness
forms so large a share of beauty, that everything which fulfils its
own purpose well may be said to have some claim to beauty. A very little taste will generally make it beautiful." With an extract from "Freedom in Art," in which Mrs. Bawds draws attention, in a
frank and intelligent manner, to a most commonly ignored principle, we conclude, hoping that her countrywomen may profit by her ad- vice :—" We must therefore give intelligent attention to the chief points which go to make up our clothing. And who is so fit to con- sider those points as the wearer 1°' "Aud until individual opinion is admitted to be free, we can have no true, original art in England, in dress, nor anything else, for the secret of all true art is
freedom to think for ourselves, and to do as we like." "But
freedom were apt to lapse into licence, and general harmony to end in hopeless discord, unless the clear perception of right and wrong (afforded in the present instance by shrewd and cultivated taste) took the helm. Taste is then undoubtedly a matter of principle and sympathy. Care of others' feelings and views, honesty of purpose, and a sense of propriety and fitness go a long way to render people charming."
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