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

The ladies of France, from north to south, from east to west, closed up their ranks, and bravely defended, inch by inch, their stuffs and their colours, their jewels and their trinketry, disputing with the agents of authority, and advancing a thousand ingenious reasons for keeping everything they had got.

The King had to resume his pen, and to complete his edict by a series of explanatory clauses, detailing point by point what was permitted and what was prohibited. He made certain concessions to the ladies, and allowed them a few little coquettish indulgences; but outside of these what was forbidden remained forbidden, and the sumptuary law was rigorously enforced.

" Le velours, trop commun en France, Sous toy reprend son vieil lionneiir," says Ronsard, in a letter to the King, in which he praises the reformatory decrees of Henri II. Catherine de Médicis, that gloomy princess, whose blood poisoned the blood of the Valois, the murderess who died full-fed upon crime, now predominated over the Court of France—it was still brilliant —like a black phantom, em-The head-dress of blematic of the approaching

Catherine de Médicis. era of crime and massacre.

She left the artifices of coquetry to the Court ladies and to Diane de Poitiers, her husband's mistress, the supreme beauty, the semi-mythological goddess of the Renaissance, of whom Jean Goujon made a statue, even

THE RENAISSANCE.

as Canova long afterwards sculptured Pauline Borghese, another princely beauty. The prettiest creations of the age are dark-coloured costumes, elegant but severe, composed of harmonies in gray, or harmonies in black and white, the colours of Diane de Poitiers.

Uoder Heuri II.

At the death of Henri II,, Catherine assumed the costume of a widow, and this she never laid aside. Surrounded by a swarm of brilliant young beauties, her Maids of Honour, who were called " The Queen's flying squadron "— a squadron that served her to better purpose in her innumerable schemes than many squadrons of swash-bucklers — she j^assed throuçjh the three troubled reio-ns of the kings her sons in black from head to foot, black like the night, black like her own soul.

A wide skirt in black stuff, a black, pointed bodice, ^Yith large, black, wing-sleeves attached to the shoulders, a black collar, ruff-shaped, and for head-dress a sort of hood or toque, with a front which comes down in a point upon a brow busy with dark designs ; such was her costume.

It seems that it was Catherine who imported ruffs into France, when she arrived from Florence for her marriage ; and these ruffs (fraises) were adapted at once by both men and women.

Ruffs were of all sorts, moderate and outrageous, very simple ones in pleated lawn, and others in wonderful lace. The ruff was a charming invention, it had its drawbacks no doubt, like many another device of fashion, but its quaint sliapes, in fihny kice, formed a dainty frame to the faces of fair women, whicli looked out from gems iu a setting of fine workmanship.

The decorative elegance of the Renaissance was largely due to the master-pieces of the essentially feminine art of lace-making. The same artist who worked in bronze, in gold, or in silver, who carved wondrous decorations in stone on the façades of palaces, supplied the designs for ruffs ; lace had its Benvenuto Cellini, at Brussels, at Genoa, and especially at Venice, the chief centres of lace-making.

It was not until the time of Henri III. that the ruff assumed its full proportions. At first it was merely a gorget with round stiffened folds which encircled the throat from the collarbone to the ears, the harsh close-pleated ruff of a period of increasing gloom. Protestant austerity had been gaining ground rapidly, and although the Catholics retained their more facile manners and customs, the religious quarrel had become very bitter, and civil war brooded over France.

Under the ephemeral reign of Francis IL, with its passing glimpse of poor Marie Stuart, and her aureole of fate, and under that of Charles IX., costume was of a discreet and sober fashion. Men's doublets and women's bodices were slashed, like the stiff sleeves puffed at the top. The only articles of jewellery worn were the buckles and pendants of the gii'dles called 'cordelières,' the mounts of the ' aumônières,' and a necklace underneath the collar, which was a small fluted ruff, with cuffs of the same material.

In 1563 Chancellor de l'Hôpital, a declared foe to extravagantly wide farthingales, had succeeded in contracting and diminishino- them by a severe decree, which also interdicted the wearing of padded hose by men. But it came to pass that the King (Charles IX.) visited Toulouse, and the fair dames of that place petitioned him for a relaxation of the edicts of the stern Chancellor, whereupon the King,

acting with greater clemency on this occasion than he afterwards did towards the Huguenots, pardoned the farthingale, and allowed it to resume its vast proportions.