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

With these Hat dresses, shawls and small mantles were worn. Such was the sober and retiring toilette of the beuinninf; of the Second Empire, a régime destined to transform it by degrees into a complicated, showy, and exaggerated costume, of doubtful taste and no stjde, with the exception, about 1864, of a few passing alterations and additions.

The main idea of the reign—so far as fasliion was concerned—the great innovation which was to give the tone to toilette, was Crinoline, hooted, attacked, contemned by journalists, caricaturists, husbands, everybody, but victorious over all the clamour and all the mockery.

Bonuet, 1848.

as well as over the blame which it really deserved.

It may be said quite truly that under the Empire woman occupied three or four times as much place in the world—at least in circumference—as dyu'ing any preceding period, even that of Louis XV. of unvirtiious memory,

l'or crinoline reigned more despotically than paniers. It was adopted Ijy women of every class, and girls wlio worked in the fields did not consider themselves dressed on Sundays unless tliey wore balloon-shaped steel hoops like those of the town ladies.

Bustles, and petticoats flounced with horsehair stuff, had made the eye gradually familiar with the enlargement of skirts, and when crinoline, pure and simple, was abandoned, first for steel hoops, and then for the ' cage ' with hoops and cross-bars of steel, the ladies were delighted with the balloon-like effect, and the cage-crinoline became fashionable all over the world.

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the many objections to this mode—we can remember what they were—or upon its inconvenience 5 but, from the aesthetic point of view, crinoline ought to be solemnly anathematized, ridiculed, and excommunicated, for ever—that is to say until the day of its re-appearance under another name.

It is true tliat the skirts wliicli were spread out over the much-reviled crinolines looked like wobbling domes, and that the entire

Criuoline.

toilette was loaded in a heavy and awkward style with little shabby adjuncts ap^ilied to common stuffs, while the paniers of the eighteenth century were worn under the artistically-trimmed skirts of gowns made of rich brocade and flowered stuffs. The exaggeration and the absurdity of paniers possessed the charm of gracefulness, while crinoline had nothing to redeem its ridiculous movement. The masterpiece of Impeiial fashion was overdone.

Witli these absurd and intrusive crinolines, worn by the women of the period, we may recall the memory of the Talma, the burnous, a rather pretty Algerian mantle, the 'pinch-waist ' in ribbed silk with pagoda sleeves—oh ! that pagoda sleeve ! It was an ugly and inconvenient funnel made uglier by lace or fringe trimming.

Special mention must be made of shawls» the famous Indian cashmere, and the large ' tapis ' shawl. The elegance of the shawl has been much lauded, but in fact it is not elegant at all, unless it be small, almost as narrow as a scarf, and worn with an easy carelessness. What is there to be said for the big shawl, hitched upon its wearer's shoulders as though

upon a clothes' peg, and hanging straight down, hiding her figure and her attire ? Merely that it is an ugly garment, and tit only to he worn by market-women on Sundays.

Among convenient inventions we may notice capelines, zouave jackets, red garibaldis, and

Al'^'l

Second Empire Bouuet.

figaros, among the commendable novelties of the Empire.

Bonnets were not meritorious. About 1863, the cabriolet shape, with a curtain, and flowers both outside and inside the brim, was universally worn ; it was in fact only the original big bonnet of the Restoration period, spoiled, ridiculously trimmed, and coming to a lamentable end.

Such, then, was the unbounded luxury with which President Dupiu reproached the women of the time, in the famous pamphlet that made a sensation in 1865,—the luxury which attained its utmost height in the great City on Grand-Prix days, spreading from the hippodrome of Longchamps all along the boulevards, the luxury which, we were told, made of Paris a second Byzantium in decline, gave scandal to the worthy bourgeoise in a little shawl, and brought blushes to the cheeks of the rest of virtuous Europe, still constant to sweet simplicity, and practising the cult of Saint Muslin at sixpence a yard.

This demoralizing and appalling luxury may have been unbounded, but it was not artistic, or in good taste, aud it conveyed at great cost the impression of a sham.

Although the recoil has not yet gone far enough to enable us to estimate or pass judgment upon the fashions of the Second-Empire period as a whole, without being influenced by the sense of something ridiculous that is always conveyed by things merely 'gone ont,' it seems to me that the women and the artists of the next century will regard it very mncli as we do now. We cannot imagine the painters of that future day reviving the fashions of 1860 in their pictures, for the

Piuch-waist.i