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

Avas worn at the top, crowning tlie edifice. Tlie hair was dressed very high, in several bows, with curls falling irregularly, three on one side, four on the other, around the face. The fashionable fair of 1830 was a charming person in her evening dress, with the completely developed leg-of-mutton sleeve, her slioulders emerging from a line of fine lace, the nape of her neck fully shown under the large comb fixed in the fair or dark tresses, which were drawn up and gathered together at the top of her head. In the street, on the boulevards at the promenades, or in the Champs-Elysées, she still wore a low-necked gown, and draped, but did not hide herself in a little shawl coquettishly adjusted.

Let us return for awhile to the subject of head-dresses, which is not Avithout importance. The head-dresses of the period may be classified as chivalric and Ossianic, toques and Tam-o'-shanters (bérets), caps and turbans, and finally, hats.

It would need a poet fitly to extol the grandeur, and bewail the decline of the feminine hat. Under the Restoration, nntil 1835, the hat was in its gdorious and triumphant period, it rested proudly on the head, it

A gauze ' buret.'

flaunted its phimes, with gracefully swaying bows, and big satin knots. After the disfiguring ' blunderbuss ' or shako of the Empire—a mere tube enclosing the face at the end of a dark passage—the hat underwent alterations, it was widened and opened. Formerly it had been set quite straight upon the head, now it was daintily plnced sideways upon the hair, which was rolled into large irregular curls. The naj^e of the neck was most becomingly displayed, the slioulders were also seen under the shade of a big hat, for bodices were worn very low-necked, and were not invariably edged with a fluted collerette.

This was the hour of triumph for the hîtt, but its decline was coming fast ; the turned-up brim, horn-shaped, or in a long roll, was about to reappear, ribbons and plumes were to be suppressed, the face was once more to be hidden at the end of the passage, and the neck to be concealed by a big ugly cottage-bonnet. And from tliat time forth wc were to have a whole series of lamentable inventions in eccentric and inelegant styles, even to the 'bibi' bonnet of the second Empire, and the ridiculous ' plate ' hat of 1867.

But a reaction has set in, of late years we have seen some really pretty and becoming hats and bonnets.

Large Restoration Hat.

As for the cap, the ladies of those days wore, when at home, coquettish ' rumpled ' caps, is big as hats, with a crown raised very high to liold the tall comb, and bordered with a quantity of lace and ribbon, which confined their curls, or ' English ' ringlets. These were the last days of elegance in caps ; henceforth the pretty cap was no more to be seen except in the country, for so long as the majestic ' hennins ' of the Norman, or the various winged coifs of the Breton women shall last. After the pretty house-caps worn by the 'lionnes ' of 1830, the decline of the cap set in. The capriciously-quilled cap looked well on the heads of milliners' girls and grisettes, with their pert, Parisian noses, and knowing, mocking eyes ; it was still pretty, and, besides, it was the head-dress that they so lightly toss metaphorically over the highest windmills, but the cap of the grisette afterwards became the ungraceful head-dress worn by fat shopwomen, and it finally fell to the lowest level, that of the porteress.

The belle of 1830 went forth to conquest in the boudoirs of the Chaussée d'Antin, or on the

UNE HLHGAXTH AUX CHAMPSLLYSLHS. RliSTAUKATIOX.

fashionable promenades—the Champs-Elysées or Longchamps—and she captured the hearts of dandies cramped in their high-collared coats,

House-cap.

as a sprightly, elegant person in Avide, undulating skirts, and leg-of-mutton sleeves.

She could hide herself behind under the brim of her bisj hat bristling with ribbons and feathers, by a mere movement of the neck, securing a strict incognito. When she rode in the Bois de Boulogne she wore a coloured habit with leg-of-mutton sleeves, adorned with frogs, or ' Brandenburgs,' or even brightened up by a white canezou.

Unfortunately, she actually ventured at a later date, when on horseback in the country, to substitute the peaked cap, that hideous ' casquette ' which is the disgrace of the nineteenth century, for her large hat with its graceful floating veil.

At this period numbers of pretty, barenecked women were to be seen at the fashionable theatres, in bodices opening in a peak down to the waist over a wide, worked chemisette, the trimmings of the bodice coming up on the shoulders and sleeves. They also wore looped boas, curls and ' heart-breakers ' ^ (inelegantly called spit-curls in England), and had their hair dressed in several different and ^ Accroclie-cœurs.

complicated ways, with flowers, combs, antl sprigs of satin.

Belles of the romantic school tried to outdo one another in mediœval toilettes. They sought

Riding-li.ibit in 1S.30.