'A controversy threatens to arise as to which is the better-looking sex, obscured by the fact that for feenturics women have been deseribed as "fair," whether they be fat or thin, misshaped, bow-legged, or warts. "It is entirely masculine politeness which is responsible for {this curious legend, for there is no doubt, viewed from the artist's point of view, that man is the bettor-looking animal of the human race, says Ella Hepworth Dixon, in tke "Westminster Gazette," One has only to paint in a student's atelier to -pereeive this elementary fact. He is usually taller, slimmer, has better shoulders, straighter legs, his complexion needs no attical aids, and his head wants no adornment. "He has only to shave, brush his hair, and put no clean linen and 4 well-cut coat to look well; whereas the dressing of a woman is the most complicated and dificult thing in the world, Men wear habitually the ugliest clothes whicl: have ever been vented, yet, in the mass, they invariably lock good deal nicer than we do, No one can say that a shiny "topper" is a beautiful object, yet most men look better in them than in their much-loved soft felts, Their evening clothes are distineton itself compared with our silly furbelows, Yet let no woman ime agine that by putting on a dinnor-Jacket and a white tie and adopting an Eton crop she is going. to. look as well as hor brother. She only accentuates her luck of proportion, of line, of good complexion, of size of eye and length of lash. More over, a man, when he reaches thirty, has usually' far more expre his face and reveals
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.