An enquiry into the duties of the female sex / By Thomas Gisborne.

  • Gisborne, Thomas, 1758-1846.
Date:
1813
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An enquiry into the duties of the female sex / By Thomas Gisborne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    82/254 (page 68)
    instances, that wayward caprice, and a passion for admira- tion, deviate into those paths of folly which lead from the objects of pursuit. We have run Through every change that fancy, at the loom Exhausted, has had genius to supply; And studious of mutation still, discard A real elegance, a little used. For monstrous novelty, and strange disguise {b). So preposterous and fantastic are the disguises of the human form which modern fashion has exhibited, that her votaries, when brought together in her public haunts, have some- times been found scarcely able to refrain from gazing with an eye of ridicule and contempt on each other. And while individually priding themselves on their elegance and taste, they have very commonly appeared in the eyes of an indif- ferent spectator to be running a race for the acquisition of deformity. It is a frequent and a just remark, that objects in their own nature innocent and entitled to notice, may become the sources of disadvantage and of guilt, when, by being raised from the rank of trifles to ideal importance, they occupy a share of attention which they do not deserve; and when they are pursued with an immoderate ardour, which at once indisposes the mind to occupations of higher concern, and clouds it with malignant emotions. There are few sub- jects, by a reference to which it is more easy to illustrate the observation ; there are none to which it is more evidently necessary to apply it, than fashions in attire, in equipage, in furniture, in the embellishments of the table, and in other similar circumstances. Thus, to speak of the topic imme- diately under consideration, if, in addition to that reasonable degree of regard to propriety of attire which ensures the [b) Cowper’s Task, Book 2d.