and merits fairly balanced in the scales of justice, until her clothes were thrown in, and then the fatal scale sunk loaded with her follies. The other lady meets her reward earlier, for a great knight who was famous all over Europe having obtained papa's consent, came for the purpose of marrying her, and finding her very tight-laced and unnaturally small in the waist, fell in love with her younger sister, who dressed in a more natural manner; and the lady, like many others, died a maid, the victim of her own vanity.
Still it is evident that a corset, or perhaps more properly speaking, a "cincture" has been worn by women in one form or another in almost every civilized community. The necessity for supporting the figure and breasts in domestic duties; in maternal cares, and in dancing; and also to enable the folds of a flowing robe to fall gracefully over the bosom, led no doubt to the invention of this ornament, which is at once useful and agreeable to the wearer.
The ancients had accordingly several sorts of cinctures. One used solely to preserve the spherical form of the breasts was called by the Greeks taduidion, and by the Romans strophium. Ovid furnishes ladies with rules for the use of this band, and it
