The once fashionable footgear, the yellow Turkish slipper, has given place generally to the slipper of patent leather worn by European ladies. Much of the beauty of color and picturesqueness of costume has therefore passed away, as may be seen from the following description of the Turkish woman's appearance at the middle of the sixteenth century: When they (the women of Turkey) go abroad, the ladies wear the _yashmac_ made of gold stuff, heavily fringed, and confined to the head by a crown blazing with jewels. The figure is concealed by a cloak of richest brocade or velvet. Sometimes you may have the charm of seeing as many as one hundred _arabas_, or carts, very splendid and richly gilded, drawn by gaily decorated bullocks, each containing a number of these great ladies with their children and slaves. "The procession is a most gorgeous sight. Each cart has as many as four mounted eunuchs to protect it from the curiosity of the public, who have their faces almost to the earth, or avert them entirely, as the caravan passes." So, also, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has left, in a letter to the Duchess of Marlborough, written in 1717, a very graphic account of the costume of the sultana. Lady Mary describes the _dolma_, or "vest of long sleeves," the diamond-bedecked girdle, the long and costly chain about the neck, reaching even to the knees, the earrings of diamonds shaped like pears, the _talpoche_, the headdress covered with bodkins of emeralds and diamonds, the diamond bracelets, the five rings upon her fingers, the largest ring Lady Mary ever saw except that worn by Mr. Pitt. There was also a pelisse of rich brocade brought to the royal Turkish lady when she walked out into her garden. Fifty different kinds of meat were served at her dinner, but one at a time; her golden knives were set with diamonds in the hafts; gorgeously embroidered napkins were in abundance, etc. Much of this magnificence and display has now passed away, but, as Stanley Lane-Poole says in his _The History of Turkey_: "While the house of the Ottoman monarch of to-day, if more in keeping with the spirit of the time, is very commonplace beside that of last century ... nevertheless, the modern seraglio is hardly an anchorite's cell." Cosmetics were once used in profusion. The painting of the eyebrows and the dyeing of the finger tips with henna were considered marks of beauty. The custom is dying out entirely in Constantinople, though in the remoter regions of the empire the habit is still in vogue. The attempts at beautifying the face are often referred to by the poets as marks of beauty, as when Fuzuli dilates upon the "Eyes with antimony darkened, hands with henna crimson dyed. Among these beauties vain and wanton, like to thee was ne'er a bride. Bows of painted green thy eyebrows; thy glances shafts provide."