There is something peculiar to the toilettes of the present century; a desire for unceasing change which exceeds the bounds of eccentricity and even of extravagance. The Greek wife or Roman matron desired but one thing--garments which would enhance their beauty. Undoubtedly they admired rich and costly goods; but I do not believe that the day after they had imported, at a great expense, robes of the finest linen or silken tunics of brilliant colors, they would declare that fashion would not permit a garment so cut or a head dress arranged in such a manner. And without going back so far, what would our ancestors of two centuries ago say, if they saw the decided repugnance we feel to appearing twice in society with the same toilette? Their dresses, so rich, so graceful, so sparingly adorned, were handed down almost from generation to generation; and surely those celebrated women of the eighteenth century were not less beautiful than we, as their admirable portraits which adorn our parlors clearly show. I lately saw three pictures of the same marchioness, taken at different periods of life--as a very young woman, at thirty-five or forty years of age, and at a more advanced period of life; and I found her in the three portraits wearing the same robe of brocade, only the rose-colored ribbon which adorned her hair and her corsage in the first two pictures had been replaced in the third by a bow of a more sombre color. How astonished would those ladies of the court of Louis XIV. have been, if it had been predicted that their great-grand-daughters would change the style of their apparel or the dimensions of their head-dresses every year, and that a hundred different publications would carry every week from one end of France to the other the inventions, more or less happy, more or less singular, of some fashion-maker of the capital. For let us remark, and it is a sufficiently striking fact, that in the continual changes of fashion we who at times find it so difficult to yield our wishes to those of a husband whom we have sworn before the altar to obey, are always ready to yield obedience to a milliner or a mantua-maker, whose only desire is to sell their goods. And in truth they succeed in doing this very well. Have you never remarked a very curious circumstance, and one which deserves to be related in the history of the costumes of the nineteenth century? To-day, fashion passes from one extreme to another, so that what was worn last year is not permitted this year. And now do you understand this apparently strange custom? A robe is graceful in style and trimming; it is very becoming to you; the color harmonizes well with your complexion and your hair; your mirror has told you so. The fashion changes; your face, your style of beauty, if beauty you possess, remain the same; yet you do not hesitate to discard your becoming attire for something so ridiculous, so extravagant, so frightful perhaps, as to make you