We have to do, generally, in this and the following articles merely with the fashionable dress of the day, and therefore might omit all that related to what the noblesse were pleased to call the _bas peuple_; we will, however, give a portrait of a famous French Intendant of that day, filling an office the English call a steward. Except that the coat is plainer, that there is no sword, and that the _coiffure_ is less labored, it is almost identical with the first engraving given. [Illustration] An examination of the above will show that one great difference between the costumes of that day and our own was the use of powder; a stupid fashion which nothing but the confusion of the French revolution could do away with, yet which was adhered to with the most wonderful tenacity. Another whim was the habit of wearing the sword, which may be said yet more positively to separate the eighteenth from the nineteenth century. This habit, which had its use in the days of the _Ligne_ and the _Fronde_, lasted till the commencement of the present century. Etiquette absolutely required that all who presented themselves within the sacred precincts of Versailles should be thus decked, and it became ultimately a passport, so that the shopkeeper, dancing-master and _coiffeur_ had only thus to deck themselves, and they might jostle in the stairway of the palace gentlemen as noble as the king. This, however, all disappeared amid the revolution, when the pike and musket usurped the place of the gilded rapier. The materials of the fashionable coat of that day were Brussels’ camlet, velvet or silk. At this time we can form little idea of the variety of colors worn; black, green, blue, rose, yellow and violet all were seen. The waistcoat was not a _gilet_, but reached the hip, extending below which were breeches, which being worn like a sailor’s, without suspenders, had from time to time to be hitched up by the hands. In the cold winter of 1739 the English gaiters and over-coat were worn for the first time, and to this new fashion an old French nobleman attributed the decay of the monarchy.