Feminine beauty is an engaging subject. It holds first place among the topics of talk in people's gatherings, as it does in the world of the printed letter.

What, then, is beauty — this hidden, bewitching thing before which the ages and the generations have bowed? Is it a fashion? Or is it, one wonders, a convention that people follow according to their tastes and their ways of looking at things? Does beauty pass and fade with the days, changing and altering as women's fashions change and familiar customs shift?

1 — Queen Mary of Scotland, who captivated with her beauty and charm all who beheld her — even those entrusted with guarding her in prison.

2 — Louisa Rosalie Lefevre, who set Paris on its feet and off them in the eighteenth century, and won the Italian troupe brilliant success for twenty years.

3 — The blonde Evelyn Laye, who represents beauty at the opening of this century.

4 — Anne Mars, by the brush of the famous French painter "Bredon." One of the enchanting French actresses to whose beauty statesmen and commanders bowed, Napoleon foremost among them.