"Yester-year"; ten centuries of toilette from the French of A. Robida

France had experienced great trials and reverses after a long period of glory and magnificence, and was sorrowfully contemplating the slow and melancholy setting of the Sun-King. She had lived for many years in an atmosphere of oppressive ennui under the rule of the old monarch and the grim-visaged lady, his companion, and she realized with a sensible relief that Louis was in his vault at St. Denis, and Mme. de Maintenon in rigid retreat at St. Cyr. All the repressed youth, all the restrained frivolity, all the longing for pleasure of the whole nation revived, and the great madness of the Regency period broke out.

The frisky eigliteenth century, kept in check under the rod of the grumbling and impotent old seventeenth, which seemed endless, was about to behave itself all of a sudden like an emancipated page, and to toss its cap very high indeed over all possible windmills.

Fashion, said by moralists to be the daughter of frivolity, invented a thousand new follies to do honour to its mother, and as though that were not enough, it re-adopted some of the old ones which had been so long forgotten that they were once more charming.

Fashion in the eighteenth century, from the Regency period onward, was characterized by

breadth and amplitude, in fact by a return to the skirts of tlie time of Henri III,, the farthingale with its consequences, width of sleeves and height of head-dresses, and these were soon to be exaggerated in virtue of a law of

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equilibrium and harmony.

Under Henri III., it was the ruff that grew up and forced the head into a portentous 'horn'; under Louis XV. and Louis XVI., it was the head-dress that became monumental.

The farthingale reappeared under the name of 'panier.' It came from the other side of the Channel. Two English ladies brought specimens to Paris, and exhibited them in the Garden of the Tuileries. The extravagant fullness of these ladies' skirts excited great surprise among the men and women who were taking their daily v/alk in the Gardens, a crowd gathered round the foreigners, and pressed on them so closely that they were in danger of being flattened, if not smothered. At length a gallant oflicer of the Mousquetaires du Roi interfered, and extricated the ladies and their paniers from a very unpleasant position.

At that time the fashions did not travel round the civilized world in six months, and disappear, without being entirely used up, in less than two seasons. They took time to come forth and be developed, and they lasted in their chief features, Avith the alterations, adjuncts, or improvements tliat were suggested every day, for several years.

The panier was destined to live throughout the century, and it took no less an event than the Revolution to kill it.

Some years elapsed before the farthingale completely reconquered Paris ; its restoration was effected slowly, timidly, by modest attempts, then, one fine day, about 1730, it won, and its undisputed reign began. All the ladies, discarding half measures and demi-paniers, adopted the large panier, six feet in diameter, which took at least ten ells of stuff to cover it.

'Panier' was the self-evident name for this extraordinary article of costume, for the first petticoat extension was contrived by means of osier or cane hoops, bird-cages in fact ; the whalebone arrangement came afterwards. A Master of Requests whose name wns

Regency liuuting-costume.

Pannier having perished in a shipwreck on his voyage home from the Antilles, his sad fate was used by cruel fashion as a pretext for giving a nickname to the panier, just then in the tiawii of its rcnowu. Prior to this were the ' little Janseiiist paniers,' coming down to the knee only ; the ' creaker ' (a bustle made of linen cloth, much gummed and folded), which creaked at the slightest movement ; the 'call-bird,' the 'finger it,' the 'wench,' and the ' tumble.' ^ All these names were inventions of a time that was by no means prudish ; there were also the more respectable small paniers called 'considerations.' For some time the large ones were called ' maîtres des requêtes.*

The large panier letl naturally to a change in the make of gowns. Then arose those most graceful, dexterously-negligent fashions which we have called by the name of Watteau, in honour of the great painter of gala gallantry, on whose canvas so many of the fair ladies of his time survive "in hoops of wondrous size," painted and patched, fan or tall cane in hand, and always ready to embark for Cyprus with some red-heeled admirer.

^ Criardo. Itonti^-on-tvnin, tàtez-y, gourgandine, culbute.

The real realm of Cytliera was, however, Paris, whether governed by the Regent or by

Flying Gowu.

Louis the Well-beloved. The century had fifty years before it, in which to gambol and amuse itself, fifty years for games and laughter, but the time Avould come when the powder and the patches were to be washed off by tears.