A young couple visiting a draper's shop to choose material for a wedding gown. Engraving by Frederick A. Heath after W. Mulready.

"And where men have not read, they have seen; for it may be safely asserted that, among all the pictures contained in our National Gallery, both in Trafalgar Square and at South Kensington, not one has attracted more universal attention from all classes, high and low, rich and poor, the learned and unlearned in art-knowledge, than the famous 'Choosing the wedding gown', suggested to the artist by the opening passage in Goldsmith's equally popular story of the 'Vicar of Wakefield'"--The art journal, loc. cit.