ever have been since, of different materials. The older corsets were generally made of canvas, duck, or jean, and were stiffened either with straw, cord, or what were then called "stay-sticks," that is, pieces of wood which were used for the same purpose as whalebone and steel busks are now. Occasionally, however, leather, such as that worn for soles of shoes, was used, and formed a heavy casing for the body. Indeed, this was the case whatever material was adopted; the corset was a stiff, heavy, and unyielding envelope in which the body was confined, wanting alike in adaptation and elasticity.
There is something supremely ridiculous, to us, in the old sumptuary laws, which regulated the dress of every class of the community, the gravity with which the Legislature fixes the width of a lappet or the dimensions of a ruff, and determines that no gallant shall walk the streets with the toes of his shoes more than half a yard long; but we are not aware that those sages ever dealt with the corset; what they, however, omitted, the medical faculty took up, and a controversy almost as edifying has been carried on between the doctors and the staymakers, each party being perfectly ignorant of the other's profession. A lady believes what she feels,
