I am fully persuaded that it was the enthusiastic admiration of Grecian democracy that recommended to the French nation the dress _à la Grecque_, which exhibits not the elegant, ornamented beauty, but the alluring female, fully as well as Madame Tallien's dress _à la Sauvage_. It was no doubt with the same adherence to _serious principle_, that Mademoiselle Therouanne was most beautifully dressed _à l'Amazonne_ on the 5th of October 1789, when she turned the heads of so many young officers of the regiments at Versailles. The Cythera, the _hominum divunque voluptas_, at the cathedral of Notre Dame, was also dressed _à la Grecque_: There is a most evident and characteristic change in the whole system of female dress in France. The _Filles de l'Opera_ always gave the _ton_, and were surely withheld by no rigid principle. They sometimes produced very extravagant and fantastic forms, but these were almost always in the style of the highest ornament, and they trusted, for the rest of the impression which they wished to make, to the fascinating expression of elegant movements. This indeed was wonderful, and hardly conceivable by any who have not seen a grand ballet performed by good actors. I have shed tears of the most sincere and tender sorrow during the exhibition of Antigone, set to music by Traëtta, and performed by Madame Meilcour and S^{re} Torelli, and Zantini. I can easily conceive the impression to be still stronger, though perhaps of another kind, when the former superb dresses are changed for the expressive simplicity of the Grecian. I cannot help thinking that the female ornaments in the rest of Europe, and even among ourselves, have less elegance since we lost the sanction of the French court. But see how all this will terminate, when we shall have brought the sex so low, and will not even wait for a Mahometan paradise. What can we expect but such a dissoluteness of manners, that the endearing ties of relation and family, and mutual confidence within doors, will be slighted, and will cease; and every man must stand up for himself, single and alone? _Foecunda culpæ sæcula nuptias Primum inquinavêre, et genus, et domos. Hoc fonte derivata clades In patriam populumque fluxit._ HOR. iii. 6. 17.