It would be strange if so simple a process, which under many conditions results in such a great improvement, had not been put into practice in very early times, and trousers, although they seem to typify the ugliness of modern costume, are in reality surrounded by a halo of antiquity. It is only right, however, to point out that these tubular garments were in olden days not associated with the highest civilization. The Romans, for instance, did not wear trousers, though the nations whom they were pleased to call barbarians, did. Some of the enemies of Rome are shown on Trajan's column wearing nether garments of the kind most familiar to us, and our illustration is taken from the representation of a barbarian soldier carved on an ivory diptych of St. Paul. (See Figure 79.) [Illustration: FIG. 79.--A barbarian soldier wearing characteristic trousers (from a diptych of St. Paul, after Marriott).] The kilt is sometimes called the garb of old Gaul, but one province of the latter owes its name--Gallia Braccata--to the custom among its inhabitants of wearing braccæ or breeches. In our own country trousers were in vogue before the advent of the Roman conquerors, and though for a time the dress of the invaders was adopted by those who followed their fashions, we find that in the time of the Saxons and Normans the barbarian style found favour once more. In the picture of a Saxon fighting man (see Figure 80), we see that he wears trousers that somewhat recall those of the modern sailor, and there seem to have been many different styles even in those early days. [Illustration: FIG. 80.--A Saxon military man wearing wide trousers (from the Harleian MS., No. 603, after Fairholt).] During the course of our history, long trousers went out of fashion for a very considerable period, though knee-breeches of various kinds flourished from time to time, until recently, when the original and less elegant garment once more triumphed and became part of the everyday dress of men. Boys still wear knickerbockers in one stage of their development, intermediate between the doffing of the petticoat and the donning of the trouser, and there is a tendency, that does not diminish, for the shorter garments to be used by men of all ages when they are not occupied with formal business. [Illustration: FIG. 81.--A peasant woman of Champéry wearing trousers.] Trousers are often wrongly thought to be a modern invention, and it is easy to go away with the idea that they are exclusively the attributes of men. This is far from being the case, and as in Scotland we find the petticoat still in use by men, so in France and Switzerland (see Figure 81) we see the peasant woman wearing trousers of the ordinary type, to say nothing of Oriental countries like Persia and Siam (see Plate V), where trousers form part of the dress of women even of the highest rank. [Illustration: A SIAMESE PRINCESS, SHEWING THE TROUSERS WORN BY WOMEN OF HIGH RANK. _PLATE V._]