COLOURS IN LADIES' DRESS.
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Incongruity may be frequently observed in the adoption of colours without reference to their accordance with the complexion or stature of the wearer. We continually see a light-blue bonnet and flowers surrounding a sallow countenance, or a pink opposed to one of a glowing red; a pale complexion associated with a canary or lemon yellow, or one of delicate red and white rendered almost colourless by the vicinity of deep red. Now, if the lady with the sallow complexion had worn a transparent white bonnet; or if the lady with the glowing red complexion had lowered it by means of a bonnet of a deeper red colour; if the pale lady had improved the cadaverous hue of her countenance by surrounding it with pale-green, which, by contrast, would have suffused it with a delicate pink hue; or had the face
'Whose red and white, Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on,'
been arrayed in a light-blue, or light-green, or in a transparent white bonnet, with blue or pink flowers on the inside—how different, and how much more agreeable, would have been the impression on the spectator! How frequently, again, do we see the dimensions of a tall and embonpoint figure magnified to almost Brobdignagian proportions by a white dress, or a small woman reduced to Lilliputian size by a black dress! Now, as the optical effect of white is to enlarge objects, and that of black to diminish them, if the large woman had been dressed in black, and the small woman in white, the apparent size of each would have approached the ordinary stature, and the former would not have appeared a giantess, or the latter a dwarf.—Mrs Merrifield in Art-Journal.