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TASTE AND FASHION.

WE come to the question, What is fashion? What is taste? Let us endeavour to search out the root of our distinction.

In its higher and more sovereign manifestations, fashion is rooted in a desire of caste. Accordingly, in those countries where caste is made an article of religion, and cannot, therefore, be encroached upon, the modes of dress and ceremonies of social life undergo no change, for none is here necessary to keep imitation at a distance. But, in the Western countries of the old world, the liberty enjoyed so far endangers caste, that the only way to keep distance, is to lead off in a perpetual round of change in the dress, equipage, and social forms of life. Some new fashion is started, in a quarter entitled to lead. The example is then followed by others in the higher circle, not in the way of imitation, but rather in the way of pride, and under a sort of tacit agreement in the circle, to keep distance and preserve caste. But the new style soon grows common, descending upon a second class, called the vulgar, by the circle just named, for a feeling of caste also strays down to these, and they are ambitious to be as like as possible, to what is for ever on the stretch to be unlike them. Or, perhaps, the new style becomes so associated with elegance that they are constrained to suffer it as a model of taste. By this time, the fashion has, of course, gone by in the circle where it began.

Truth obliges us to add, that, what we call fashion in our country, is almost wholly of the second circle. We originate no fashion, unless it be in matters where some kind of false taste is stereotyped and propagated by an over-zealous admiration. Accordingly, the term fashion carries a sense of imitation with it, on this side of the Atlantic, which is far less prominent on the other. Fashionable people are, with us, a caste-like people, for the most part, such as covet the air and show of caste, whatever may become of the substance. They watch the modes of noble dandyism and royalty, on the other side of the water, hasting to receive the very things which the originators invent to put them at a distance, and wearing them, not to give their assent to the insult, as we might think, but with the highest satisfaction or even pride!

Such is the general history of fashion. When you come to ask where the legislature of fashion is, or who it is that originates a given fashion, it will be more difficult to answer. It may be in the French court, or in the lady patronesses of Almacks, or in some new Brummel, who is just now raging as the dog-star of fashion in London. Accordingly to Montaigne, the French fashions, at least in his day, were controlled with absolute sway by the court.

"Whatever," he says, "is done at court, passes for a rule throughout France. Let the courtiers but discontinue those tun-bellied doublets, that make us look like I know not what, those long, effeminate locks of hair, and you will see them all presently vanished and cried down."

If we go on further, to ask what it is that leads the originator of a fashion to adopt this rather than some other, no certain answer can be given. Sometimes, though seldom, it is a real effort of taste. Sometimes it is the mere caprice of a tailor, or a milliner; or this tailor or milliner may have been bribed by some great manufacturer to start the style in question, and give him a market for a particular kind of goods. Or the object may be to compliment some prince. Henry VIII. for example, being exceedingly corpulent, suddenly saw himself surrounded by corpulent ministers, and a corpulent people; the whole male nation was stuffed from the shoulders downwards; and so far was the extravagance carried, that an act of Parliament was passed, forbidding the use of stuffing, under certain specified names. An amusing story is related of the manner in which the law was evaded, which shows, at the same time, to what a pitch of absurdity the fashion was carried. A certain person was arrested, who proved that he had used no one of the cloths named in the law, by showing that he used, instead, a pair of sheets, two table-cloths, ten napkins, four shirts, a brush, a glass, a comb, night-caps, &c., &c. Sometimes a fashion originates in the effort to hide some deformity. Thus the long bag-wigs are said to have been invented to relieve the hunch-back of the Duke of Brunswick. The huge sleeves lately worn by the ladies, were an excellent disguise for a bad arm, and were probably invented for that object.

On the whole, we can do no better, as regards the origin of fashions, than to say that they are chosen without any regard to the inherent beauty of nature's forms, and sacrifice, if it so happen, all comfort. They are the work of caste, which goes dodging through so many modes of absurdity, to escape imitation and maintain exclusive position.

Having thus distinguished the radical idea of fashion, we will next inquire what we are to understand by taste.

It is much to be regretted that we have, in English, no better word than a mere figure derived from the palate, to signify one of the highest and most divine attributes of the mind. The term aesthetic, which the Germans have borrowed from the Greek, has the same relation to all the senses, which taste has to the palate; and they mean, by the aesthetic faculty, that which distinguishes all beauty. It is the critical power-the power of forms-and is to the clothing of truth, what the reason is to the discovery or elimination of truth. By our very feeble and flat word taste, we mean, or ought to mean, the same thing. It is that which distinguishes

the glorious and fair in all earthly things, and especially their divinely constituted relation to truth and the life of mind.

The highest known example of taste is that of the Almighty, when he invents, the forms, colors, and proportions of this visible creation. His conceptions were all original. He did not copy from the sight of previous worlds, but he had all beauty, all the colors and forms of things in his own creative fancy, saw them as distinctly, loved them as much, before he gave them outward reality as after.

'Then deep retired

In his unfathomed essence viewed the forms,

The forms eternal, of created things;

The radiant sun, the moon's nocturnal lamp,

The mountains, woods, and streams, the rolling globe,

And wisdom's mien celestial. From the first

Of days, on them his love divine he fixed,

His admiration, till, in time complete,

What he admired and loved, his vital smile
Unfolded into being. Hence the breath

Of life informing each organic frame,

Hence, the green earth, and wild, resounding waves,
Hence, light and shade, alternate warmth and cold,
And clear, autumnal skies, and vernal showers,
And all the fair variety of things.'

The whole fabric of creation is an exertion of taste, and we refer to this high example, because we know of no other which is sufficient to evolve our idea.

Taste in man is every way resembled to this power of form displayed in creation, except that it is a capacity slowly cultivated and matured, and not inherently complete like the divine. It is a power which goes to school, as we may say, to nature, and by exercise on the forms of natural beauty, is waked into action. But, when awake, it is as truly original as the taste of God, and is one of the highest points of resemblance to him in our nature. It is not coupled with creative force, that is, the power of executing its conception by a mere fiat. But the forms it invents, in architecture, dress, furniture, gardening, and ceremony, are all original, and are the offspring of the soul's great liberty.

Such being the nature of taste, we make no question, that it is one of the highest offices of life, to start this power of beauty into full maturity of action. Hence it is, in fact, may we not believe, that so many things needful to our existence here, are left to be fashioned by art. The heavens, the colors, the seasons, the rivers, lakes, mountains, and general surfaces of the earth, have their form given them by nature. But nature builds us no house or temple, spins no dress. She writes no poetry, composes no music, presents us with no forms of intercourse. Having given out forms enough to beget activity in human taste, she scants her work, that we may go on and exert a creative fancy for ourselves.

The wild forests are cleared away, the green slopes are dressed and laid out smiling in the sun, the hills and valleys are adorned

with beautiful structures, the skins of wild beasts are laid aside for robes of silk or wool. In a word, architecture, gardening, music, dress, chaste and elegant manners all inventions of human tasteare added to the rudimental beauty of the world, and it shines forth, as having undergone a second creation at the hand of man. And herein is man to be distinguished from the animals. They cannot dress. Their outward form is given them, and they must wear it. If they build, it is by a set pattern of instinct, not in the study of proportions and varieties. But man is to choose, in a great degree, his own outward appearance, and be, in his person and his condition, what the beauty of his soul permits. Taste is God's legacy to him in life, which legacy he cannot surrender, without losing the creative freedom and dignity of his soul.

We perceive already, that fashion, in so far as it prevails, proposes to dispense with taste. It is man, or a circle of human conspirators, affecting superiority over the laws of natural beauty, and enacting modes and standards of their own. There is a very striking analogy between the relation of Fashion to Taste, and that of idolatry to religion. The laws of taste are the laws of God and nature. But fashion, by a certain sort of impiety, exalts itself above all that is called God, in this respect. The forms of inherent beauty are too permanent. It must, therefore, invent something new, however monstrous, something unknown to the common world. Out of the ugly and the uncomfortable, in despite of all proportion, it makes up new successions of deformed gods, and sets them up to be worshipped. It is scarcely possible to review the absurd fashions which have prevailed in the world, without associating, as you pass on, the grinning and ugly monsters that figure in the prolific heards of heathen deities. Witness into how many burlesque forms the human person is continually tortured. Now, as in the days of Henry VIII., it is a mere clumsy rotundity. Now, the connection of the upper and lower portions of the body is straitened and attenuated, even down to the point of metaphysical delicacy. A statuary, in the mean time, would as soon think of adorning his figures with wens or hunch-backs, as of thus violating the fair proportions of nature. In the reign of Mary, a proclamation was issued, limiting the breadth of the square-toed shoes to six inches. The name given to this fashion was a good comment on its supposed elegance. It was called the bear's foot fashion, and the ladies and gentlemen were so ambitious of this model, that nothing but the civil power could restrain them from out-bearing the bears themselves. At another time, Parliament interfered, and limited the sharp-toed shoe so as not to exceed the foot by more than two inches. It had before been extended ten or twelve inches beyond the foot, and the point turned up like a sleigh-runner, and suspended by a chain to the knee. In the reign of Charles I, the boots in fashion had a