Wilton, Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton; Wilton, Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton [Editor]: The art of needle-work from the earliest ages: including some notices of the ancient historical tapestries (London: Henry Colburn Publishers, 1841)

NEEDLEWORK IN COSTILME. 213
supposed or pretended that the deity whom they
thus propitiated was Love : we aver that the auto-
crat under whose irreversible decrees they thus suc-
cumbed—was Fashion.
And, after all, who is this all-powerful genius ?
What is her appearance ? Whence does she arise ?
Did she alight from the skies, while rejoicing stars
sang Paeans at her birth? Was she born of the
Sunbeams while a glittering Rainbow cast a halo of
glory around her ? or did she spring from Ocean
while Nereids revelled around, and Mermaids
strung their Harps with their own golden locks, soft
melodies the while floating along the glistering
waves, and echoing from the Tritons’ booming shells
beneath? No. Alas, no ! She is subtle as the air;
she is evanescent as a sunbeam, and unsubstantial
as the ocean’s froth ;—but she is none of these.
She is—but we will lay aside our own definition in
order that the reader may have the advantage of
that of one of the greatest and wisest of statesmen.
“Quelqu’un qui voudrait un peu etudier d’ou
part en premiere source ce qu’on appelle les Modes
verrait, a notre honte, qu’un petit nombre de gens,
de la plus meprisable espece qui soit dans une ville,
laquelle renferme tout indiffer eminent dans son sein ;
pour qui, si nous les connaissions, nous n’aurions
que le mepris qu’on a pour les gens sans meurs, on
la pitie qu’on a pour les fous, disposent pourtant
de nos bourses, et nous tiennent assujettis a tons
leurs caprices.”
Can this indeed be that supereminent deity for
whom so “many do shipwrack their credits,” and
make themselves ‘f ridiculous apes, or at best but