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

Monarchy and Republicanism have adversaries, but they have advocates also. The farthingale, whether as panier or crinoline, had every husband, every man against it. The corset only competes with it in the multitude of its enemies—and the corset also has invariably beaten them.

The farthingale, which came into existence under Francis I., about 1530, marks the end of the Middle Ages more clearly and completely than any political change whatsoever marks it. The clinging or hanging gown, with its straight sculptured lines, has disappeared. A world is ended.

The farthingale was at first known as the ' hocheplis,' or shake-folds. This name was applied in the first instance solely to a stiffened pad, stretched upon a wire frame, which was attached to the waist to give width to the skirts. Afterwards the name was extended to a construction of cane or whalebone, forming a cage under the petticoat.

The costume of women in the reign of Francis I. was ample and majestic rather than graceful; gowns were made of velvet, satin, and flowered brocatelle, of various colours, with wide hanging sleeves, lined with sable, or enormous puffed sleeves raised over the shoulder, and forming a succession of rolls down to the wrists, with slashes showing puffs of lii^ht silk.

The busked corset, tlien called ' basquine,' appeared at this period. Very probably there was a separate apparatus worn underneath the bodice, but the bodice itself was stiffened by means of whalebone; at all events, the confused descriptions of the basquine, which are all we have, lead us to think this may have been so.

Certain modes of adjusting the bodice, to which objection might well be taken, had been imported from licentious and effeminate Italy, and men also went bare-necked. Large sums were expended in jewellery and goldsmith's work, for the ornamenting of head-dresses— the 'attifet/ the 'chaperon,' and the 'toque.' Queens, noble ladies, and bourgeoises, impoverished themselves by buying gold chains, enamelled trinkets, pearls, and other gems.

La belle Ferronniere, one of the mistresses of Henri Quatre, who succeeded the Duchesse d'Etarapes, invented the fashion of wearing a carbuncle hung on a gold thread, in the middle of the forehead. One more jewel to be worn, when the head-dress, the bodice, and the girdle, were ah'eady laden with sparkling stones ; what a charming idea ! The head-dress à la Ferronnière achieved an immediate success.

Several additions to dress, hitherto unknown, came into use at this period. For summer there was the feather-fan, a pretty pretext for goldsmith's work in the mounting ; for winter there was the muff. According to the royal decree, black muffs were for the bourgeoises, coloured ones for noble ladies only. Parasols were also imported from Italy, but did not ' take ' to any great extent ; they were too heavy.

But now the extinguisher of ' the Reform ' popped down upon the brilliant epoch of the Valois King, and a dark, troubled time set in.

Fashion, which had been brilliant, lavish, and superb in its sumptuous amplitude during the reign of Francis I., a chivalrous, prodigal, and ostentatious prince, in an age of dash

sous iinxRi II.

and 'bravery,' and of licence also, was about to change its character suddenly, and to become as austere as it had been showy, as

Slashed sleeves.

sombre and melancholy as it had been brilliant and full of colour.

At the beginning of the reign of Henri II. there was a tough struggle between the gloomy and the gay fashions, but the former very soon beat the latter, and by degrees the bright and frivolous modes vanished, and were succeeded by dark colours, eventually indeed by plain black.

The times Avere troublous, and tending towards blackness too. In the train of ' the Reform,' -with its religious dissensions, its wars of sermons and controversy in the first place, came actual war, waged with cannon and arquebus, stake and gallows.

In 1549, Henri II. opened hostilities against luxury in dress, by an edict interdicting a great number of ornaments and stuffs, trimmings, borders, gold lace, cloths of gold and silver, satins, &c., and strictly regulating the fashion. This edict prescribed the kind and quality, and even the colours, of the stuffs to be worn by the different classes.

The right of wearing a complete vesture, both upper and under, of crimson hue, was reserved to princes and princesses exclusively ; the nobles, male and female, were permitted to display that brilliant colour in only one article of their costume.

Ladies of the next rank had the right of wearing gowns of every colour except crimson, and their inferiors miglit wear a dull red or black. The same sliding scale was appointed for stuffs, from satins and velvets to plain cloth. Loud cries of lamentation resounded throughout the country \\hen the edict was about to be enforced.