It is strange with what rapidity from the epoch of the Directory a taste for luxury and pleasure sprung up in the minds of the people. Music again resumed its sway, and a hundred places of public amusement were opened. One of the most significant evidences that the late or present French Revolution is not yet over, is the fact that as yet public amusements do not thrive, and that the people look elsewhere for excitement than to the stage and concert. The most curious of all spectacles is the stormy deliberation of the Assembly, and the artistes of the Executive power the most attractive of all performers. Gradually a disposition _to make a figure_ inoculated society. As the Revolution became distant luxury increased. Yet it was not the _faste_ of old monarchy, but a new splendor, which the persons left on the surface of society by the _bouleversement_ of all orders threw around them. The women in the lowness of the bosoms of their dresses descended below even the modesty required by the Regency, and the _incroyables_ became more fantastic than the _marquis_. The following was the costume they adopted, and a more tasteless one can scarcely be conceived: [Illustration] They were not so richly dressed as their predecessors, nor were they so elegant and graceful, but their manners were quite as affected. Then came again the taste for gallant acrostics and love songs, which caused the poetry of the Cheniers to be forgotten for _fantasies_ addressed to the popular actresses. This prodigality was the more criminal because it had a contrast in alarming want. The Revolution did not make France more rich, nor did the hecatombs slain in defence of the liberty of the country make the cornfields and vineyards more fruitful. French prodigality was imitated everywhere, and to this recklessness may we attribute the fact of the great increase of the expense of dress in every grade of society over all the civilized world. The mode of wearing the hair for men had long become fixed; it was cropped and _au naturel_, and has thus remained to our own day. The male costume became every day more and more inelegant. Frocks were worn short, loose and broad; pantaloons loose as a sailor’s lasted to a late day of the empire. This costume had but one merit, simplicity, a quality inspection of the following engraving will show it to have possessed in a great degree. [Illustration] All embroidery was abandoned. In 1803 the coat had taken its definite form, where there is every prospect that it will remain permanent. It had an immense collar and was very short before, but it was yet a coat. Pantaloons were by no means what they are now, yet still the garment is unchanged. The hat had become round, and the cravat was stationary.