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

For awhile small caps were the mode; these Averejust like infant's caps trimmed with lace, and gave the wearers a pretty childlike air. But the triumph of the period was the big 'cabriolet' hat, an enormous hood that stretched out far beyond the face, which was hidden in the depths of the ungainly structure. Sometimes these ' cabriolets ' boasted the monstrous addition of a tube-shaped crown, taller than the tallest shako in all His Majesty's armies.

The women of those times needed to be really handsome to captivate, in this hideous head-gear, the brilliant officers who between two victorious campaigns came to singe their hearts, like moths' wings, at the flame of bright eyes.

At balls and receptions, in the salons where the gikled military butterflies threw humble civihaus into tlie shade, the ladies, who no longer affected the triumphant airs of the 'Merveilleuses' of the preceding perioil, assumed a dove-like gentleness and timidity

Waiting for tlie couqncrors.

beneath the gaze of the plumed heroes. Their ball-dresses had extremely short skirts adorned with bunches of flowers, showing the leg and the buskin, no longer the antique cothurnus of the fair Tallien, but a buskin-shoe, tied with ribbons upon the instep.

These belles of the Empire, these sentimental Malvinas in baggy gowns, who were dreaming of the gallant warriors beyond the Rhine, wore

Large Empire Hat.

their liair either piled into a helmet-shape, or ' à la Chinoise,' drawn tightly up on the top of the head.

Serious beauties assumed the turban of the Turk. Everybody kuows the famous portrait of Mme. de Staël in her imposing turban. The salons were crowded with Parisian Odalisques, and their head-dress was pro-

Orieutal Dress and Turban.

nounced charming. After this, what is there that a pretty face and fine eyes, either lively or languorous, will not make acceptable ?

Presently these turbans grew to a vast size, and were adorned with gauze scarfs of various colours, and feathers. Under the Restoration turbans became the special wear of mammas and mothers-in-law, and gave them so comic an aspect, that it is impossible to look at the portraits of the period without laughter.

And then, only to think of the ' Spencers,' the heavy ' Carricks,' or driving-coats, the furred ' top-coats,' and the ' Vitchouras ! ' Furs were very fashionable ; astrakhan, marten, or sable was worn on garments of all sorts, and in pelisses of every shape.

All these queerly-dressed people, all those women whose costumes seem to be divided by ages from the attire of the eighteenth century, and also from the furbelows that their own mothers had worn, lived amid objects and svn*rounding3 entirely different from those of the recent 'rococo' period.

Are we in France or in Greece, in Egypt, in Etruria, or in Palmyra ? In what century are we living, the nineteenth after or before the Christian era ? The antique form, which was assumed all of a sudden, dates from tlie

Directory; it was introduced into Paris, and the hôtels of distinguished persons of fasliion, by Percier and Fontaine, two architects who had returned from Rome, and was speedily adapted in the houses of the bourgeoisie.

Empire Hat.

Dress had become Greek and Roman ; even before Percier and Fontaine exerted their influence, costume had j^rcceded architecture this time, and assisted in the creation of a style.

Imaofine the elegance of a salon which resembles a Greek temple, or recalls the interior of an Etruscan tomb ! Chimney-pieces of funereal style, tripods copied from Pompeii, curule chairs, inconvenient arm-chairs.

Empire Head-dress.

adorned with lions, swans, and cornucopias, beds guarded by sphinxes, consoles laden with swords, couches in the forms of burial-litters, and altars, hard lines, stiff ornamentation, and the everlasting palmetto, Greek or Etruscan borders, and afterwards, when the expedition to Egypt had brought the kind of the Pharaohs into fashion, Egyptian designs.

One must have been blessed with Large reserves of animal spirits to enjoy Hfe in the midst of these hard, stiff shapes ; daily life set in so solemn, antique, and stern a frame was calculated to produce a moodiness and ennui that were quite modern.

Hat worn in 1814.

XT.

THE RESTORATION AND THE JULY MONARCHY.

Full sleeves, and Leg-of-mntton sleeves— Collerettes — Girafle fasliions—Hair-dressing and big hats—1830 —Expansion of ' Romantic ' fashions—The last caps —1840 — Chaste bands— Medium (Juste-milieu) fashions.

Under the Restoration the very ugly and inelegant fashions of the Empire were improved from year to year, and acquired some degree of gracefulness. Fashion had probably ceased to concentrate all its thoufdits and all the resources of its genius upon the sliowy Imssurs and brilliant aides-de-camp of the French army. Feminine taste revived.

Costume was about to im[)rove daily, to discard its commonplace stiffness, to enkirge its borders here, to make itself lighter there, and, from 1825, to become (piite charming for the space of a decade.