foundation, but it is on this which fashion must rest. He who

invents with the most success, or dresses in, the best taste, would

probably, from the same sagacity employed to greater purposes, have

discovered equal skill, or have formed the same correct taste in

the highest labours of art.

I have mentioned taste in dress, which is certainly one of the

lowest subjects to which this word is applied; yet, as I have

before observed, there is a right even here, however narrow its

foundation respecting the fashion of any particular nation. But we

have still more slender means of determining, in regard to the

different customs of different ages or countries, to which to give

the preference, since they seem to be all equally removed from

na ture.

If an European, when he has cut off his beard, and put false hair

on his head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard

knots, as unlike nature as he can possibly make it; and having

rendered them immovable by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered

the whole with flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost

regularity; if, when thus attired he issues forth, he meets a

Cherokee Indian, who has bestowed as much time at his toilet, and

laid on with equal care and attention his yellow and red ochre on

particular parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most

becoming; whoever despises the other for this attention to the

fashion of his country, whichever of these two first feels himself

provoked to laugh, is the barbarian.

All these fashions are very innocent, neither worth disquisition,

nor any endeavour to alter them, as the change would, in all

probability, be equally distant from nature. The only

circumstances against which indignation may reasonably be moved,

are where the operation is painful or destructive of health, such

as is practised at Otahaiti, and the straight lacing of the English