FASHION

(Fr facon; originally from the Lat. facere, to make or form.) A term used to signify the prevailing mode or taste in any country, the only recognized quality which it po e es being mutability. It may safely be averred that in proportion to the Influence which fashion exercises in any country may its claim to civilization be vindicated, nothing being so characteristic of a rude and barbarous state of existence as a rigid adherence to the customs of antiquity. The term fashion has generally been considered as applicable chiefly to the adornment of the person, in conformity with the prevailing taste as introduced by some individual of consideration in society: but it has a much wider signification, being applied to the most trivial kind of conventional usages, a disregard or ignorance of which is sufficient in the eyes of the votaries of this tyrannical godde to banish the offender beyond the pale of civilized society. The remark which Horace makes on the introduction, disuse, and revival of language is so applicable to the term in question, that we cannot for bear quoting it in this place:— Mutta renascentur, qu:a jam cecidere, cadent que Qjitt nunc Bunl in honore vocahula, si volel ubus, Quern penes arbiirium est, et jus, et norma loqnemli.An Poetic a, y. fli. [s. 458]