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 to 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.

66 LA MODE" IN HER BIRTH-PLACE.

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

MODISH PROVERB.

THE Honourable 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 whether 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 'twas 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 ever-variable 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, and she used to leave fans of a similar description at country houses as memorials of her visits; as, for instance, when she left Hawsted Hall, she dropped her silver-handled fan into the moat. Happy of course was the lucky man who got it thence. But to get back to France.

Carlin, the famous French harlequin, once excited universal laughter by appearing on the stage, not with the usual rabbit's tail in his harlequin's cap, but with a peacock's feather, and that of such length, that the stage was hardly high enough for him. If the laughter however was universal, there was not wanting something of indignation, for lofty feathers formed a fashion in which Marie Antoinette very much rejoiced, and old royalists thought that Carlin ought to be sent to prison for his impertinence; but Carlin had not ventured on the caricature but by superior order, and the King would not consent to his being molested.

a

The fashion deserved to be caricatured, for feathers and head-dresses had raised themselves to such an outrageous elevation, when Mdlle. Bertin, the milliner, and Marie Antoinette set a fashion between them which ruined many family, that they who followed the mode to the extreme were compelled, as they rode in carriages, either to hang their heads out at the door, or to sit on the floor of the vehicle.

When Hardicanute lived at the house of Osgod Clappa, the Clapham district, which took its name from the chief, was not half so obsequious in copying the costume and carriage of the royal dandy, as all France was in trans

forming themselves into multiplied copies of the consort of Louis XVI.

And what a cruel ceremony was the dressing of that same Queen? When Marie Antoinette, in the days of her cumbersome greatness, stood of a morning in the centre of her bedchamber, awaiting, after her bath, her first article of dress, it was presented to her, or rather it was passed over her royal shoulders by the "dames d'honneur." Perhaps, at the very moment, a princess of the blood entered the room (for French Queens both dressed and dined in public), the right of putting on the primal garment of her Majesty immediately devolved upon her, but it could not be yielded to her by the "dame d'honneur;" the latter, arresting the chemise de la Reine as it was passing down the royal back, adroitly whipped it off, and, presenting it to the "première dame," that noble lady transferred it to the princess of the blood. Madame Campan had once to give it up to the Duchess of Orléans, who, solemnly taking the same, was on the point of throwing it over the Queen's head, when a scratching (it was contrary to etiquette to knock) was heard at the door of the room. Thereupon entered the Countess de Provence, and she being nearer to the throne than the lady of Orléans, the latter made over her office to the new-comer. In the meantime, the Queen stood like Venus as to covering, but shaking with cold, for it was mid-winter, and muttering "what an odious nuisance!" The Countess de Provence entered on the mission which had fallen to her; and this she did so awkwardly, that she entirely demolished a head-dress which had taken three hours to build. The Queen beheld the devastation, and got warm by laughing outright.

As England had its "macaronies," its "bloods," its "bucks," its "dandies," and its "exquisites," so France had its "hommes à bonnes fortunes," its "petits-maîtres," its "importuns," its "élégans," and last of all, its "lions."