We enter about the year 1830 into the Romantic period--the days of the heroines of Balzac, the days when Byron and Ossian were _à la mode_, the days of a fancy chivalry and mediæval sentimentality, of Sir Walter Scott, and above all of the Gothic revival. Gothic motives, rampant in architecture, make their appearance also on bookbindings, furniture, and other things, and influence jewellery to a certain degree. Among the leaders of the movement so far as it affected jewellery were the goldsmiths Froment Meurice, and Robin, whose productions, executed in accordance with the Romantic taste, assumed the form of armoured knights, on foot, or fully equipped on horseback, lords and ladies in mediæval costume, and jewels which took the shape of compositions of a similar "elegant" nature. At this period cameos were still worn, but seldom of strictly classical character. Sentimental hair jewellery likewise continued, as did the iron jewellery. The latter, however, no longer displayed classical forms, but debased Gothic designs. Chains of various kinds were in considerable favour. They were usually looped up at intervals with circular or oblong plaques of thin and coloured gold set with small turquoises and garnets. With the development of machinery appeared thin goldwork, ornamented with stamped and pressed designs. Work of this kind, characteristic of its first decades, extended far into the nineteenth century. As far as men's jewellery is concerned there is little or nothing to chronicle. Strangely enough, the masculine delight in splendid jewels that had existed up to the end of the eighteenth century, came all at once to an end, along with that older world on the ruins of which Napoleon rose. Almost all that remained to them was the bunch of seals, often of considerable size, that hung by a silken cord from the fob. It is true that occasionally beaux and macaronis actually wore earrings. But these were not employed solely as ornaments, but largely as the result of a fanciful idea, still prevalent in certain quarters, of the value of such objects against diseases of the eye. Fashion next, about the middle of the century, harked back to rococo, and imitated the style of Louis XV. It was rococo of a kind, but lay as far from the eighteenth century as did Romantic Gothic from the Gothic of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Design for the most part was deplorably bad, defects in this direction being passed off under a glitter of stones.