dowager Empresses of Germany were accustomed never to leave off their mourning, and even their apartments were hung with black till their death. I will just add, that the French Queens, previous to the era of Charles VIII., wore white upon the decease of the King. They were thence called "Reines blanches." In later days, the state mourning of the French court was purple. Consequently, when Anne wore white, black, and purple, in mourning for her departed lord, she put on the suits of woe sanctioned by the practice of three different courts.

Sophia Dorothea, the wife of George I., was the second of the royal consorts of England who never visited our shores. For allowing Count Königsmark to kiss her hand, her jealous husband murdered the Count, and shut the lady up in prison for more than thirty years. In her youth she was a charming person, charmingly dressed. The most touching circumstance of her long captivity was her weekly appearance, all clad in white, at the communiontable of the chapel of her prison-house, the Castle of Alden, where she partook of the sacrament, made solemn asseveration of her innocence, and forgave her enemies.

The process of dressing Marie Antoinette, it will be seen in another page, was at times a splendid misery. That of Queen Caroline, the wife of George II,, was a splendid mockery. Horace Walpole describes a scene as having taken place in Queen Anne's tiring-room, which really occurred in that of the sovereign lady of the second George. This exemplary Queen dressed and transacted her early worship at one and the same. moment. She and her nymphs were in one room, the chaplain solus in another. Occasionally these nymphs, in their discretion, closed the door. Whenever this occurred, the chaplain, liberal Whiston, ceased to pray, and meditated on the mysteries proceeding within. This observance nettled the Queen, and did not please her ladies. One of the latter, on re-opening the door one morning, and finding the chaplain had not progressed in his duties while he had been shut

out, angrily inquired, "Why did you stop?" "I stopped," said Whiston, "because I do not choose to whistle the word of God through the key-hole."

It is not to be wondered at, since queens afforded such examples of laxity, that fine ladies followed with alacrity the unseemly fashion. Miss Strickland notices the fact, that great ladies had, in the days upon which we are treating, a bad custom of proceeding with the affairs of the toilet during prayers; which was severely satirized, says the fair historian, in one of the old plays of that era, "where the fashionable belle is described preparing for her morning toilet, by saying her prayers in bed to save time, while one maid put on her stockings, and the other read aloud the play-bill."

The consort of George III., the "good" Queen Charlotte, lived in a transition time, and wore the costumes of two separate centuries. The little lady lacked taste; and though she set the fashion to loyal maids and matrons, seldom became the robes she wore. But at the worst of these periods she displayed more taste, and, what is better than taste, more personal cleanliness, than her daughter-in-law, the coarse wife of the heartless George IV. Queen Adelaide was simply a lady. Expensive dresses were her abhorrence; and she never put on a robe of state without a sigh at the cost. In any sphere of life she would have been a throughly tidy, honest, careful housewife.

Except for a few days, Queen Victoria has not resided at Anne's favourite Kensington since her accession. In her early days, the then little princess-clad so simply that it is wonderful the middle classes did not avail themselves of the example, and dress their darlings less tawdrily-might be seen of a bright morning in the enclosure in front of the palace, her mother at her side. On one of these occasions I remember seeing a footman, after due instruction given, bringing out to the lively daughter of the Duke of Kent a doll most splendidly attired-sufficiently so to pass for the eldwλov of an heiress, and captivate whole legions of male

poupées, all gold without and sawdust within. The brilliant effigy, however, had no other effect upon the little princess but to put her in a passion. She stamped her little foot and shook her lustrous curls, and evidently the liveried Mercury had unwittingly disobeyed her bidding. He disappeared for a minute or two, but returned, bearing with him a very torso of a doll. A marine-store dealer would not have hung up such an image, even to denote that he dealt in stolen goods, and "no questions asked." But the unhappily deformed image was the loadstone of the youthful affections of the princess. She seized it with frantic delight, skipped with it over the grass, gambolled with it, laughed over it, and finally, in the very exuberance of joy, thrust it so suddenly up to the face of a short old lady, who was contemplating the scene from the low iron fence, that the stranger started back and knew not well what to make of it; thereupon the maternal Mentor advanced, and something like an apology appeared to be offered, but this was done with such a shower of saucy "curtsies,”—so droll, so rapid, so "audacious," and so full of hearty, innocent, uncontrollable fun-that duchess, princess, old lady, and the few spectators of the scene, broke into as much laughter as bienséance would permit; and some of them, no doubt, "exclaimed mentally," as well-bred people do in novels, that there was a royal English girl, who had most unquestionably a heart and a will of her own— and may God bless both!

I have noticed above how queens of foreign birth introduced 1.ɔ our ancestresses fashions of which their young imaginations had never dreamed. The origin of all fashion then, as now, was in France; and thitherward we now will take our way.

"LA MODE" IN HER BIRTH-PLACE.

Chacun à sa mode, et les ânes à l'ancienne.

MODISH PROVERB.

THE H ourable James Howard, in the year 1764, wrote a sprightly comedy, entitled 'The English Monsieur.' The hero is an individual who sees nothing English that is not execrable. An English meal is poison, and an English coat degradation. He once challenged a tasteless individual who had praised an English dinner; and, says the English Monsieur, “I ran him through his mistaken palate, which made me think the hand of justice guided my sword." He can tell wether English or French ladies have passed along the moist road before him, by the impressions that they leave.

"I have often," he remarks, "in France, observed in gardens, when the company used to walk after a small shower of rain, the impression of the French ladies' feet. I have seen such bonne mine in their footsteps, that the King of France's maître de danse could not have found fault with any one tread amongst them all. In this walk," he adds, "I find the toes of English ladies ready to tread upon one another."

Subsequently our "English Monsieur" quarrels with a friend, because he had found fault with " a pair of French tops" worn by the Philogallist, and which were so noisy when the wearer moved in them, that the other's mistress could not hear a word of the love made to her. The wearer justifies the noise as a fashionable French noise;" for look you, Sir, a French noise is agreeable to

the air, and therefore not unagreeable, and therefore not prejudicial to the hearing; that is to say, to a person who has seen the world." The slave of Gallomania even finds comfort, when his own mistress rejects him, in the thought that "'twas a denial with a French tone of voice, so that 't was agreeable!" and when she bids him a final adieu, he remarks to a friend, "Do you see, Sir, how she leaves us? she walks away with a French step."

Such was the early allegiance rendered even in this country to the authority of France in the matters of "Mode,” of that evervariable queen, of whom a French writer himself has despairingly said, that she is the despot of ladies and fops; "La mode est le tyran des femmes et des fats."

But Paris is the focus of insurrection, and Fashion itself has had to endure many a rebellious assault. Never was rebellion more determined than that carried on against towering plumes.

In Paris, feathers and head-dress extended so outrageously, both in a vertical and a horizontal direction, that a row of ladies in the pit stalls, or in the front row of the boxes, effectually barred the "spectacle" from an entire audience in the rear. The fashion was suppressed by a Swiss, who was as well known in the Paris theatres as the celebrated critical trunk-maker once was in our own galleries. The Swiss used to attend, armed with a pair of scissors; and when he found his view obstructed by the head-dresses in front, he made a demonstration of cutting away all the superfluous portions of the head-dresses which interfered with his enjoyment. At first, the result was that the ladies made way for him, and he obtained a front place; but overcome by his obstinate warfare they at length hauled down their top-knots, and by yielding defeated the Swiss-for he never got a front place afterwards.

I will take the liberty of adding here, that the fans used by Queen Elizabeth were usually made of feathers, and were as large as a modern hand fire-screen, with all sorts of devices thereon, such as would have singularly delighted an astronomical Chinese philosopher. Sir Francis Drake gave her one of this description,