The ladies' general outfitting section came
very naturally close to the baby's. The
name describes it. As for the  contents, it
was quite plain that, if a telegraphic despatch
announced the arrival .at Southampton of
an army of amazons a thousand strong in
want of all the armoury of modern costume,
there would be no hesitation in returning
an answer of " All right; the clothes will
be sent down by the next train." Everything
was to be found there, from top to
toe, except shoes. An entire room was
given up to those instruments of torture,
stays. A single brown wooden-busked
rib-compresser was to be had at tenpence;
increasing prices ended at best French, one
hundred and fifty shillings a-dozen.

Millinery made its department very
gorgeous in ornamental articles, the greater part
of which puzzled our ignorance, and warned
us not to enter into details; but one instance
of the development of commerce in an
insignificant branch of trade was too curious to
be passed over. At a certain, or rather an
uncertain, time of life, ladies take to head-
dresses. Some adopt false hair, some caps,
and many used to wear particoloured skull-
caps of Berlin wool. These have recently
been in a great measure superseded by
certain dark-brown silky materials, manufactured
into network coronets, marvellously
resembling braided hair, and caps with
pendent corkscrew curls, made of mohair, that is,
the hair of a goat, chiefly imported from
Syria. At first there were difficulties in the
way of spinning and weaving mohair; but the
attention paid, with such remarkable success,
to alpaca led to the study of all kinds of goats'
hair; and now, more than five hundred
manufacturers, some of them little above the rank
of journeymen, are engaged in supplying
mohair head-dresses.

Artificial flowers, English and French,
occupy two rooms, and make them gay as the
parterres of Paxton. English flowers have
not, as was expected, been extinguished by
French taste and cheapness, but continue to
afford employment to a numerous class. But,
as a general rule, there is no comparison
between the two in beauty. The French flower-
maker is an artist; the English, a mechanic,
copying from a conventional standard;
although some of the English examples showed
that there must be brilliant exceptions.

From French flowers at fabulous prices
in the two extremes of cheapness ant
costliness, we returned to the principal
department in this great warehouse, lace
—the department which in fact has
originated all the rest, and led the firm in the
course of years to consult the convenience
of their customers, by concentrating all their
wants and enabling them to stock a shop in
one morning walk, under one roof. Thus
curtains, dresses, collars, ribbons for collars
bracelets, brooches, flowers, feathers, cloaks
baby-linen, bonnets, millinery, and all the
rest of ladies' apparel were added; and,
a Glasgow muslin manufactory became the
colony of the parent establishment in
Nottingham

Lace, is not a describable article, a few
figures will be more expressive than any vain
attempt to plunge into a labyrinth of filaments,
Roods of counters and shelves were devoted to
every description of every country and every
kind. France and Belgium supplied handmade
pillow-lace, as did our own counties of
Bucks, Herts, and Northampton, and Devon;
but the great trade is in machine lace and
net from Nottingham, Honiton, and Tiverton;
in which, besides many new uses, the finest
descriptions are so well imitated that, at a
yard distance, no person not in the trade,
an tell the difference between costly fine
hand-work and cheap machine imitation.
The most fashionable collar at the present
moment is Irish hand crochet, in imitation
of ancient point lace,—the difference in price
between the simulated and the real article
being about shillings to guineas. Lace curtains
and lace flounced robes in black and
white have been rendered a possible luxury
within the reach of the middle classes. Five-
and-twenty years ago an article (in net) now
sold for fourpence cost forty shillings a-yard.
Changes of the same character, succeeding
from year to year, have enabled the million to
use goods which were once the privilege of the
inactive few, have created the lace-trade
of England, and given employment to the
thousands who, directly or indirectly, draw
their wages from the house of Ashstock and
Ahrab.

The importance of the machine lace trade
may be measured in millions of yards.
Five kinds of it were sold in one year to
the extent of more than six thousand
miles, or more than the distance from
Liverpool to New York and back. This
trade rests, like the bulk of British trade,
on cheap machine manufacture, and is
daily improved and extended to new uses.
Where our grandmothers were content with
a pair of hereditary lace lappets of unknown
age, and, in their eyes, incalculable value, our
daughters and wives aspire to whole dresses
and curtains, and our servants can afford a
succession of clean light caps and bonnet
fronts. In fact, by modern improvements, we
are less afraid of wearing out than of washing;
cheap clothes mean cleanliness.

There is—purse-proud beauties would be
surprised to hear—no demand in England
for the finest and most expensive descriptions
of modern foreign hand-made lace; English
ladies .will rarely give one, two, three
hundred pounds—as French, Spanish,
Russian, and American ladies will—for a dress,
a shawl, or even a veil. The most expensive
laces they purchase are antiquities, or
mock antiquities, dyed in coffee-grounds to
the colour which enables them to pass for
the point of Queen Anne. At the French