of the ugliness to which they are themselves condemned: when men become able to dress themselves with freedom they will cease to feel pride in overdressing the women around them.

The effect of these extravagances has necessarily been to almost destroy family life for the people who have indulged in them. There are women in France-a good many, too-who dress only for their husbands and their firesides, who think that they do their duty to God and themselves in trying to make their homes attractive to their proprietors, and who imagine rightly that they serve that purpose by adorning their own persons for the greater delectation of legitimate spectators. But the quick-living ladies, who, until a short time ago, lived for the world at large, did not content themselves with any such restricted field of action. One admirer did not satisfy their eager minds; they went in for multitude, and adopted means which were as large as the end they had in view.

That some

of them really liked their husbands, and had a sort of tenderness for their children, is not at all impossible; but as it is extremely difficult to associate indoor love with outside vanities, the former was pretty often abandoned in order to be better able to attend to the latter. It would be particularly useless to draw harrowing pictures of worldliness, and of the damage which it has done to family joys in France, for its effects are pretty much the same in all the capitals of Europe. Piccadilly can tell us as much about it as we can learn in the Champs Elysées. We all perfectly well know what it looks like and what it produces, only it is infinitely pleasanter to abuse it in the French than in ourselves. It is very soothing to discuss the mote in our brother's

VOL. CXIL-NO. DCLXXXII.

eye; so we go in at the iniquities of France, as if we were all innocence and virtue on this side. It is true that the Parisiennes do encourage us to this sort of action, for they have always exposed their faults to the universe with a frankness and a completeness of which we can discover no example elsewhere. Other people cover themselves with hypocrisies and shams; but as the "nation de trop de paroles" does not seem, in this respect at least, to care what its neighbours think, it shows itself as it is. Socially there is very little humbug and scarcely any snobbishness in France. There is no recognised upper class to struggle after or to imitate. Great as are the demerits of the country in its politico-moral developments, it is singularly free from the disposition either to revere and copy rank, or to veil its passing tendencies. We see the French pretty nearly as they are; the good and the bad in them come out with full distinctness; and that is one of the reasons why it is so delightfully easy for us superior people to call them hard names.

excuse

The bad, however, was so terribly prominent amongst the riotous society of the ante-Sedan period, that there is really some for insisting on it. Since the Regency we have not seen such a wilful apotheosis of pleasure as those twenty years produced; and of all the external forms which the movement assumed, woman's dress was the most marked and most evident. Whether that dress was a cause or a result is rather difficult to determine; but its action, though limited to a certain set, was as great, within its sphere, as that of any other of the deleterious springs which were at work. It is true that there is an amusing side to the question; but so there is to the

M

history of a good many other of the damaging influences to which life is exposed. It is true that the pictures of contemporaneous society with which the Vie Parisienne' stimulated every Saturday the appetites of its readers were extremely clever and abundantly diverting. It is true that the realities, the actualities, of daily talk and daily ways, were often provocative of much laughter (more than France hears now); but after all, laughter may be bought at too high a price -and so it was in those times. Brightness and gaiety are cheering and tempting ends to follow, especially when life is young; but they are none the less real if they are innocent and not too dear. The Second Empire, however, was not particularly innocent, and no one will accuse it of having led to cheapness. It broke down the honest and wise social traditions which preceded it, it enthroned extravagance, it lowered both men and women; and one of its most active agents towards these results was probably the style of dress which it inaugurated.

But whatever may have been the degree of moral harm which was thus generated, it was, relatively, even less conspicuous than the odious corruption of taste and type which grew up during those twenty years. Regarded as a form of art and it certainly ought to be so considered women's dress is a manifest indication of current ideas on form and colour. It does not constitute a mere ornament of the body. It is not limited to the expression of individuality of conception, or of any personal sentiment of fitness (though that is one of the very best develop ments which it can assume); it is, or ought to be, an outward sign of the art tendencies of an

epoch.

Not of art in the restricted sense which so many of us attribute to the word, the narrow art of pictures, and of statues, and of sculpture, but of the universal harmonies of shapes and tints which nature shows us how to realise, and which, at many periods of the world's history, men and women have felt and followed. This is the art which so disposes objects round us that each presents the highest form which it is susceptible of attaining, and produces in us the keenest satisfactions which the eye can convey. This is the art through which home adornment in furniture, in dress, achieves the end of rendering life pleasanter, and of showing us how great results can be obtained by little means, how truth and charm and taste can be insensibly inculcated by the daily sight of the things we live with. The fashions of the Empire offered no such teaching; glare and eccentricity were their distinguishing characteristics; they did not contain one sign of the higher views which the choice of dress ought always to pursue; they were excessive in every detail, especially in cost. The caricatures of the period will hand down to posterity a tolerably correct knowledge of what the streets and drawing-rooms of Paris looked like between December 1851 and September 1870. French grandchildren will indeed mock at the aspect of the women we have known, at their crinolines four yards round, and, five years later, at their narrow skirts clinging round their legs. They will recognise in them what they really were, "des femmes remplies de bijoux et d'elles-mêmes," with small room for love of other people, and with a permanent disposition to disobey all the rules which ought to guide the choice of feminine costume. When all possible varieties of form had been exhausted, the ladies of

the period took up colour, and if Germany had not intervened, they would soon have worn out colour too, and have had nothing left to choose from. The reaction which has now set in is against all colour; women are wearing tints which have no name, which never were real or fresh or true, but which still do not quite reach the tone which we design by "faded;" they are essentially "des couleurs provisoires," as Paris calls them, in sympathy with the sort of government which France just now possesses, neither Monarchy nor Republic, neither reality nor fiction, neither seed nor flower. It really is amusing to see dress thus fit itself to the accidents of politics. From respectable under Louis Philippe, it became noisy under the Empire, and has now turned to "provisional" under M. Thiers. Whatever be its next stage, we may, at all events, be sure that it will never grow "definitive." Its essence is to change, not only with dynasties, but with all the passing fancies which caprice may set afloat. It is as well that it should be so, for if the fashions of the Empire had lasted, there would have been an end of all taste in France; such treatment would have suffocated it. It is true that the exact measure of the style of a period can scarcely be arrived at by contemporaries; prejudice and habit blind us too much to allow us to exercise discriminating judgment on objects which surround us. We can recognise the superiority of the toilet of both men and women during the epoch which stretched from the thirteenth to the sixteenth Louis; we can all see how ungraceful dress was under the Valois, the Directory, and the First Empire; but we cannot form an equally sure opinion with reference to ourselves, partly because we are accustomed to

what we live with, partly because the differences which arise from year to year involve only modifications of detail, with no marked change of character or type. As yet, although we can only compare the details of different moments of our generation, we can, at all events, give a verdict on them between themselves, and can, within that limit, assign to the ephemeral fashions of the reign of Napoleon III. their little place in history. A detestably bad one it is. Rarely has the theory of dress assumed a less satisfactory expression than during those twenty years amongst the women who, whether we like it or not, we must take as typical of the time. Rarely has a momentary rush of extravagance, in all its forms, exercised a worse influence, artistically, on those who were subjected to it.

It is scarcely necessary to offer any arguments in proof of this; but if there should still be people who, by long custom (they can have no better motive), should wish to defend the piece in which they have played a part, let them explain-if anyhow they can-the merit of a system which is based on nothing but the deification of money. Since the Byzantines put gold and silver into pictures, and called it art, we have had no similar example of the adoration of mere glitter. Happily it is over; and if the Empire should get back-which is an eventuality not to be disregarded-we may presume that it will not repeat the error, but will offer another model to its restored subjects.

But even the Empire did not crush out the true Frenchwoman; she lived through it, unaffected by examples; she maintained the old tradition in silent corners; she is coming out again in her ancient wisdom; she is once more ready to show Europe what a woman's dress

-could serve them, for no one else knows what they possess. Their habit of directly governing their dress is not, however, peculiar to this or any other class. No Frenchwoman who respects her own opinion will allow herself to be guided by either a couturière or a femme de-chambre. She lets them cut and sew, but she originates herself, knowing, by her instinct, that in no other way can she make her toilet what it ought to be-representative of herself. The main features of the dressing of the true Parisienne-of the woman who is always charming, despite her empty purse-are individuality, harmony,

and finished detail.

The

It is very easy to talk about the process in this loose way; but it is almost impossible to describe it accurately, especially so as to enable others to try their hand at it. end is peculiar to France. It cannot be attained unless it be realised by the imagination before it is produced materially. To say "I will have a black silk dress" is an abstract proposition, containing no sort of specific meaning beyond that which strictly belongs to the three words which form it. But to the true female mind the phrase a "black silk dress" is susceptible of a thousand senses and of as many associations, particularly to women who, both by pecuniary necessity and by personal disposition, do not stumble, haphazard, into their clothes, but carefully weigh them out and use much comparison. Their work is essentially one of choice and calculation, restricted, of course, in execution, by economy and by the accidents of individual talent, but absolutely limitless in general theory and idea. A black silk dress may assume almost as many forms as sunset clouds can offer. It is in selection between these

wearer

more

come to light, that the woman shows out herself, that the Parisienne stands alone. The gown is, however, but one element of the whole-the largest and most apparent, it is true, but not the most important, for a cotton dress worth fifteen francs may speak up with equal power, and may proclaim with as loud a voice, the merit of its author. The boots, the gloves, the sash, the hat, the parasol, the linen above all, subscribe largely still to the tone and type of a well-dressed woman: it is to them that the experienced eye turns curiously in order to determine the exact degree of her perfection in this branch of merit. No one who really knows and feels what dress ought to imply will limit observation to a skirt; the dissection will be rapid but complete; it will extend to every detail-hands, feet, hair, and undergarments, will each receive a scrutinising glance, and opinion will be formed on the assemblage of them all, not on any single element. In Paris, and elsewhere in France, there are crowds of women who come out reproachless from these ruthless examinations, the reason being that they know beforehand that they will be subjected to them, and prepare accordingly. It is not amongst cunning artists such as these that one sees jewels worn in the early morning, or gloves with holes in them, or stockings dangling round the ankles, twisted like the screw of a music-stool, or hanging helplessly like Turkish trousers. It is not they whose linen ever shows a stain, or who add coarse embroidery to their hidden vestments. Delicacy and fitness are their immediate means, harmony their object, charm their final end; and they reach it all.