ON DRESS.

READER! you may start to see such a heading in a Magazine devoted to moral and spiritual instruction, but I think no one can glance round our Sunday-schools without feeling it is full time that this subject was openly discussed. Dress is such a trivial matter, some say;-in itself it is, but, in its influence on the moral and spiritual nature, and as an expression of that nature, it becomes an important one.

It is to you, my elder girls, especially, the following remarks are addressed, you who are now standing on the threshold of your womanhood. Few of you but would blush (I rejoice you can still blush about it) to own how much time and thought you spend secretly on dress; not time and thought only, but your hard-won earnings likewise. Now, I want you here openly to give this matter a little serious thought; openly, because there should really be no cause for shame in thinking about your clothes; it is right to think a little (a very little, for your time is needed for more important thoughts) about dress; your body is as much a gift of God's as is your soul, and we ought to strive to make the best of all His gifts. There is yet another reason why we should care for, rather than neglect the outward,(clothes, you know, are the outward covering of the body, as the body is the garment of the soul). Have you ever considered how all your thoughts, even your most spiritual, have their origin in something outward and material, that is, that no idea ever is in your mind without having got there through one or other of your senses? If you reflect a little, you will see it must be so; and on this account we must be mindful of outward things, for there is no telling where their influence on the mind may cease. Do you not see how important the body's health is to the soul? If you neglect your body, what power have you of feeding your soul? When your body is diseased and weak, is your soul more vigorous and strong? On the contrary, do you not find it far easier to be good and to do the right, when your body is strong and healthy?

This influence of the outward on the inward is like

wise true in the less important matter of clothes; not only inasmuch as a good garment and clean is good for the health, and therefore good for the soul; and a bad garment and unclean, bad for the health and therefore bad for the soul,—but in its direct influence on the mind. You all know a little of this influence from the feeling of pleasure a clean new frock gives you, and the sense of discomfort in a dirty, ragged one, at least, I hope you all do; and though you may not know much of the laws of beauty, yet you know that some things that you call "beautiful," give you pleasure, whilst others that you call "ugly," give you pain. It is right and good to love the beautiful; remember what we read, that it was through the gate called beautiful" that men entered God's temple! The more beauty you can bring round your homes and daily lives, the better for you.

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But, to return to our subject, I have tried to show you the true motives that should prompt a little care in your dress, feeling that it is principally because you act from such very wrong and false motives, that you err so grievously.

In the first place, you err in giving far too much time and thought to this material thing, dress, and this leads to the most serious fault of all,- -you forget, in this love of finery, the insignificance and utter worthlessness of all things concerning the body compared with those of the soul, the spiritual life; your body is mortal, perishable, "a creature of to-day," a flower of the field, the wind passes over it and it is gone!" But your soul shall never fade away, it is immortal and can never die! Yet on which spend you most time and thought?

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Secondly, your aim is not to dress neatly, simply, cleanly, in the clothes best fitting your station, but how nearly you can imitate the dress of those in a higher station, not but what you have a perfect right to dress as they do if you can afford it, but you cannot, it is impossible, whilst you have to labour for daily bread. Besides the selfishness of this foolish extravagance, leading you to prefer a new bonnet or gay ribbon to a comforter for father, or warm socks for little baby, or a book to read to mother,—there is the falseness of it, you are acting a falsehood, seeking to appear rich when you

say

are poor. Oh my sisters! why strive so hard to conceal your poverty? Why need you shame of it? is it a disgrace? Think, are you less noble in God's sight, being poor? What does Bible your about the poor man and the rich? Is poverty an evil, even? Is not Sin the only evil we need dread and flee from in this world, ever watched and guarded by an All-Loving Father?

Is it because you think a fine frock or grand bonnet like "my lady's" will make a lady of you, that you work so hard to be fine? If so, it is labour in vain! Surely you must see that clothes cannot change you, they can neither raise nor lower your nature; if I clothe myself in a beggar's rags, I do not become a beggar. Do not seek after this ladyhood, you cannot reach it; strive rather to reach the far grander and more attainable goal, true womanhood,grander, inasmuch as it contains the highest and best portions of the former!

Have you ever thought why it is the custom throughout the land to put on a better garment, if possible, on the Sabbath? Why do you put aside the soiled toilworn clothes? Is it merely because there is no work to do? I much fear that any higher motive, if once known, is now lost sight of. It was from a deep sense of reverence for the Sabbath and the sacredness of the House of Prayer, that man first put aside his work-day clothes and rayed himself in his best. The best dinner, as well as the best coat, was reserved for the Sabbathday; man sought to enjoy its great blessedness in the material as well as in the spiritual, in body as in soul, Likewise it was a kind of symbol of the putting away of work-day thoughts; it was an outward purification significant of the inward; outwardly pure, he felt more fit to bring his mortal presence into God's House, and commune in spirit with the Most High; not that actually he was nigher unto Him in his Sunday clothesmind that; God grant we may never leave our prayers only for our best clothes and the Sabbath-day!

These outward forms are valuable and acceptable, only as long as they are the expression of a good and pure thought. Remember, there was no striving to be fine, no unpleasant consciousness of selfishly spending the

little all in gratifying vanity; there was no foolish extravagance needed. It is not in the faded cast-off garments of some lady, or in the smart bounet of some dirty fabric and artificial flowers, enclosing an unwashed face, that you can show your reverence for the Sabbath! No, my girls, if you are guided by so pure a motive, your dress will be strangely different from what it now too often is. Purity and simplicity are the two grand requisites. In the bright and modest face, the well-brushed hair, the neat straw bonnet and clean frock of some simple stuff and colour,—we shall read purity of heart, and love and reverence for things good and holy. And let me assure you, these are attainable with a far smaller outlay than your present.

To-day, looking over my books, I find many of my elder girls discontinue the Sunday-School Magazine, and sundry other small demands on their purses of a like nature.—I remonstrate, and am told, "we can't afford it now;" no wonder this is muttered with down-looking eyes, (well do I remember the honest pride with which the first subscription was brought me for our book-fund). Thanks be, you still can feel this is not well; but let this love of finery grow upon you, and you will soon cease to know that books are better, more-enduring than gay clothes; a well-cultivated mind and honest heart, than a brightly covered body.

This is only one small instance of this growing evil. Had I time and space I would say a few words to the Teachers in our Sunday-schools, but, as it is, I can only earnestly entreat them to be mindful of the example they set in this matter; a teacher, like a minister to his congregation, should strive in every way and thing, in the lowest as in the highest, to be a model to his class, a living exemplar of the virtues and duties that he seeks to inculcate.

Trifles often try the temper more than severe trials. The pebbles in our path make us weary and footsore, sooner than the rocks which we have to surmount by a persevering effort.

BEFORE presenting a sketch of the career and works of the man who shone conspicuously as a sculptor, a painter, an architect, and (to some extent) as a poet and musician, it will be well to say something of the state of art when he was born, and to glance at the revival of painting and sculpture. The arts were never wholly lost; notwithstanding the intellectual gloom which followed the descent of the wild tribes of the north on the civilised portions of the world, some sparks of the old fire of artistic genius lived through the darkness. The earliest work now extant of any Italian painter is by Guido of Sienna (not the great Guido);

*This is the first of a series of articles, which will contain the substance of a course of lectures given during the early part of this year, in a schoolroom which is adorned by the busts of the great men referred to in them.