On the question of the beauty of small waist, ANOTHER ARTIST says—“I do not for a moment deny the truth of your artist correspondent’s assertions, for I consider, as everyone must, that that the proportions of the human body are the most beautiful in creation (where all is beautiful and correct); but the grand mistake which so many make is this. In civilized countries the body is always clothed; and that clothing, especially of the ladies of European nations, completely hides the contour of the body. The effect of this is to give great clumsiness to the waist when that part of the person is of its natural size. Let anyone make a fair and unprejudiced trial, such as this: let him get a statuette of some celebrated antique, the Venus de Medicis, or the Greek Slave, and have it dresses in an ordinary dress of the present day, and see what the effect really is. Until Fashion, in its ever-changing round, returns to the costume of ancient Greece or Rome, we can never expect to persuade ladies not to compress their waist merely on the score of beauty; and as several of your correspondents have shown that a moderate compression is not so injurious as some supposed, there is no chance of the corset becoming an obsolete article of female dress. It has been in use for 700 or 800 years, and now that its form and construction are so much modified and improved there need be no longer any outcry against it; indeed, outcry has for centuries failed to affect it, though other articles of dress have become in their turn obsolete—a clear proof that there is something more than mere arbitrary fashion in its hold upon the fair sex.”