People grieve about the departure of the good old times, and prate of the days of chivalry, which Mr. Burke sixty years ago said were gone. That they are gone the world may well rejoice at, not only because they were times of ignorance and cruelty, but also of discomfort and inconvenience. In the diary of a court-officer of the days of Henry VII. is the note of a charge for cutting rushes, to strew on the floor of the Queen-closets; and another one mentions the number of under-garments belonging to Henri III. of France as considerably less than any one of the better orders in our own time would require. In those days, the downy couch meant a bed of goose-wing feathers; gloves were not; and when a gentleman needed a new doublet or head-piece, he went not to a tailor or the hatter of the day, but to a blacksmith. Let the lovers of romance talk as they please, there was little true poetry, and less feeling, in the minds of the heroes they wish to extol, than of the veriest apostles of commerce of our own age. Rightly enough do we date civilization from the times when men laid aside the rugged manners of old with the bronze and iron armor, and doffing the hammered helmet, assumed the cap of velvet and the hat of plush; when they laid aside the iron gauntlet for the chamois glove, and assumed the Cordovan boot in place of the leg-pieces of steel. The feelings of chivalry yet lingered as late as the days of the English Charles I. and the French Louis XIII. in the minds of the nobility. A new series of ideas, however, had arisen in the breasts of the people at a date long previous to this. Printing had become general, and the learning previously the property of the priests had become the heir-loom of humanity: As a natural consequence, new ideas and new wants were unfolded, and these same ideas had become more general. At this crisis France took the lead, and not only in philosophy but in the minor things of life, French manners and habits were copied. Consequently, in describing costume, Paris will be perpetually referred to, from the fact that from that great city emanated the fashions which controlled the costume of the world. It is true that other nations had their peculiar costume, handed down and preserved by the tradition of courts, as the Norman dress continues even now the court uniform of the state officials of the British kingdom; Spain had her peculiar doublet, hose and cloak, and Holland her own court apparel. If, however, we look nearer and closer, we shall discover each of these were dresses imported from France at some particular crisis, and retaining position and importance in their new home, when they were forgotten in the land whence they were adopted.