THE FALLING OUT OF LOVERS IS THE RENEWAL OF LOVE.
THE END.
I must now leave you to prepare my dress for the ball. The ball-room, which occupies an entire wing of the house, is full of artists and workmen; but her ladyship will not permit me to see it till the night of the dance; as, she says, she means to surprise me with its splendour. Cynics may say what they will against expensive decorations; but in my opinion, whatever tends to promote taste in the fine arts (and a mental is in some degree productive of a moral taste); whatever furnishes artizans with employment, and excites their emulation, must improve the condition of society.
Adieu.
LETTER XXXII
The morning of the ball, I awoke without any remains of my late indisposition, except that captivating paleness, that sprinkling of lilies, which adds to interest without detracting from beauty.
I rose with the sun, and taking a small china vase in my hand, tripped into the parterre, to collect the fresh and fragrant dew that glistened on the blossoms. I filled the piece of painted earth with the nectar of the sky, and returned.
During the day, I took nothing but honey, milk, and dried conserves; a repast the most likely to promote that ethereal character which I purposed adopting at night.
Towards evening, I laved my limbs in a tepid bath; and as soon as the sun had waved his last crimson banner in the west, I began my toilette.
So variable is fashion, that I determined not to dress according to its existing laws; since they might be completely exploded in a month; and, at all events, by the time my life is written, they will have become quite antiquated. For instance, do we not already abhor Evelina's and Harriet Byron's powdered, pomatumed, and frizzled hair? It was, therefore, my plan to dress in imitation of classical models, and to copy the immortal toilette of Greece.