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Show FASHION. I Fashion is the setting up and then disowning a certain stand- H ard of taste, elegance and refinement, which has no other foundation H or authority than that it is the prevailing distraction of the moment, H which was yesterday ridiculous from its being new, and to-morrow H will be odious from its being common. It is one of the most slight H and insignificant of all things. It cannot be lasting, for it depends on H the constant change and shifting of its own harlequin disguises; it H cannot be sterling, for, if it were, it could not depend on the breath of H caprice; it must be superficial to produce its immediate effect on the H gaping crowd; and frivolous, to admit of its being assumed at pleasure H by the numbers of those who affect, by being in the fashion, to be dis- H tinguished from the rest of the world. It is not anything in itself, nor H the sign of anything but the folly and vanity of those who rely upon it H as their greatest pride and ornament. It takes the firmest hold of " H weak, flimsy, and narrow minds ; of those whose emptiness conceives . H of nothing excellent but what is thought so by others, and whose self- H conceit makes them willing to confine the opinion of all excellence to II themselves and those like them. H That which is true or beautiful in itself is not the less so for stand- H ing alone. That which is good for anything is the better for being H more widely diffused. But fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostcn- H tation and exclusive egotism, it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, H despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath H tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute. H William Hazlitt. H |