lives of the poor girls who work for them;
nor are the girls themselves disposed to much
active complaint. Like thousands of others in
many different vocations, they accept ills
incident to their way of life which they believe
inevitable parts of it, are sensitive of
interference, and even disposed to resent as
humiliating any sympathy that holds them up for
public pity, or suggests that they are " slaves."
A public outcry over their condition is, in fact,
more offensive to the majority of the young
ladies themselves than even to their employers.

And now let us try to come to the root of the
evil. The main fault is not in the employing
milliners who, except a few prosperous firms,
themselves live but a poor, honest, hand-to-
mouth life, struggling as hard to keep out of
the Bankruptcy Court as many of their girls
struggle for bread. Unable to find capital where-
with to buy on profitable terms, and with their
prices kept down by sharp competition, there is
a great body of employing milliners who earn
most honourably and laboriously a bare
subsistence with the help of their " young ladies."
The profits of a few court milliners may, on
the whole, possibly tend to wealth, but the
business, as now constituted, is one which few
women would follow by choice, if more ways
existed by which an average woman's wit and
industry were free to earn her livelihood.

We are not disposed to say hard things of
the employing dressmakers. There are some
sordid and mean women and men in every calling,
and there is everywhere a hard struggle
for bread that sometimes makes the generous of
heart seem grasping. Nor are we more disposed
to say hard things of the dressmakers' customers.
We concede them their wish to wear at any
time the dress that is in fashion. Every well-
constituted woman shrinks reasonably enough
from making herself conspicuous by an
exceptional costume. At present, nobody knows in
April what will be, for occasions of full dress, the
costume required of her in May. A lady is
forbidden by the sudden freaks of a despotic fashion
to order a dress many days before the day when
it is wanted. And if she does her best, and gives
her dressmaker even a fortnight's notice of the
want of a court dress, La Mode has established
the propriety of dresses so expansive and so
flimsy, that the dressmaker thinks it necessary
to send them home with the bloom on, at
the moment when they are to be worn, as the
fruiterer sends in his peaches at the moment
when they are to be eaten. Much as they are
squeezed and tumbled at the drawing-room, they
must not even be folded before it. Wardrobes
are not yet constructed to contain unfolded
dresses of the modern style. If the wardrobes
were built to the dresses, the houses would have
to be built to the wardrobe. This the dressmaker
knows, and is unwilling to trust a lady
with the custody of her own drawing-room or
ball-dress, until almost the hour when she must
put it on.

That is one difficulty. The other is that the
gay season of London lasts only for about four
months. Upon the honey she then makes, a
respectable dressmaker now tries to keep her
bees together all the year. The house in which
this season's scandal arose, and every good house
of its class, keeps all its in-door workwomen in
receipt of wages for more regular and reasonable
hours of work during the whole slack time. As
the trade is now constituted, such houses are
only enabled to do this by submitting to a fearful
press of overwork during the season.

There are two classes of milliners' hands, the
in-door and the out-of-door workwomen. The
out-of-door workers are taken on or dismissed
as may be necessary; their greater independence
and freedom makes them a healthier class, but
their position is very precarious, and they are, in
their days of want, largely exposed to an often
irresistible temptation. Their morality, therefore,
is usually lower than that of the in-door
workers. Many of the in-door milliners' girls,
young ladies of middle rank by birth, give up,
in terrible over-work for a third part of their
year, almost their lives for a safe though
bitterly poor independence and the maintenance of
honour; and they perfectly well understand the
nature of their bargain, nor do they see how
customers or employers— in the better class of
houses— could materially better its conditions.

And we ourselves fairly confess that we see
no remedy but Revolution. The true blot was
hit by a dressmaking witness, before one of the
committees, who said that if it were possible to
spread the work over the year, the trade would
be very good and comfortable; but this could
not be done, because it was impossible to foretel
changes of mode. But why in the name of taste
and common sense should we submit to that
preposterous impossibility? Who is this tyrant,
Mode? The men of England have had their own
sensible revolutions; now let us have a revolt of
Englishwomen against French domination, and
let them set up and pay worthy homage to, a
Court of Fashion of their own. It is no question
about trifles of fashion; it is a question of
life and happiness to thousands whether we shall
submit to all the sudden freaks of very bad
French taste, or whether we shall some time set
up an honest and reasonable standard of our own.
England was never happier than she now is in
her sovereign. We have also the feminine care
over the expected gaieties of a court, now
entrusted to a young princess, frank, lively,
sensible, and very popular, to whom there would be
gladly conceded leadership in all matters of
female fashion. But even the princess could
not, single-handed and by mere influence of
example, overcome the tyranny of an old usage,
still less could she supply for us the need there
is of a few months' notice in anticipation of each
change of fashion. Let a few women of rank and
fashion, with a right sense of true elegance— who
might accept honourable service in the matter
upon nomination of her Majesty— form, with
the princess at their head, a little Committee
of Taste, empowered to revise the fashions of
court dress, and able by their influence and
example in society to make their decrees more