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

PREMIER EMPIRE.

to have recourse to ' fronts ' in order to display ringlets once more, and to make up their Etruscan chignons with borrowed plaits.

It was an unfortunate moment for feminine costume. Fashion itself seemed to have been conquered by the great con(|ueror, and to have devoted all the zeal and grace of its fancy to dressing magnificently, braiding, embroidering, gilding, and befeathering the innumerable squadrons of gallant swordsmen about to be despatched by His Majesty the Emperor and King to gallop all over Europe, and to be flung upon the cannon and the bayonets of its united peoples.

What, we may ask, did the Frascati Salons and the Tivoli Gardens, whither the fair ladies of the Directory in their bold undress, in their transparent tunics, and all their Athenian frippery, had resorted, think of the costumes now worn by these very same women, or by their younger sisters ?

What did they think of the ugly bogs which were called gowns, of the ridiculous sheaths,' the lainp-shade hats, and the cabriolet-hood bonnets ?

Masculine fashions were no less inelegant. Let those who would not consent to adopt them enlist in the Hussars ! The ugliness of male costume, which increased in the course of the century, had ah'eady set in.

But the women !—Here is a fine lady of 1810!

First, the skirt—there is so little bodice that the skirt forms almost the whole costume—is of print or some common stuff; it begins under the arms, hangs ungracefully down to the feet, or is cut short just over the tops of the boots ; a few folds, four or five rows of notched trimming, or three little flounces, form its sole ornament. The bodice is hardly perceptible, a tight girdle is placed close under the bosom ; for sleeves there are two thick rolls at the shoulders, which are also bared, and this hideous dress is finished off by a worked muslin tippet, or a big collar made of several rows of quilled net. The latter were the only possibly pretty features of the toilette, but even these were put on so ungracefully that they were cumbersome rather than ornamental.

Begiuniug of the liith century.

Hats and bonnets were mostly ridiculous. As all heads were full of the army and war, the ladies stuck head-gear of extraordinary shapes atop of their senseless costumes ; sometimes a kind of helmet, with a wreath and a great tuft of feathers, sometimes a big hat in the form of a shako, and even real hehnets Avere worn, and named à la Clorindc, in memory of those of the Knights-Crusaders.

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.