We must restrict ourselves to the garments worn by women in each succeeding age, and indeed we must confine ourselves to France alone, if we would achieve as complete a picture as possible of the transformations in female dress from the time of the Gauls to the day on which we shall have accomplished our task. Grace, vivacity, and, we must add, caprice, are the distinguishing characteristics of Frenchwomen. With some very few exceptions we shall find the qualities or the failings of our charming countrywomen reproduced in their mode of dress. Be she a peasant or a dweller in cities, a working woman or a duchess, every Frenchwoman in town or country reveals herself frankly by the clothes she wears. Her innate desire to please makes her especially object to wear garments of any one particular fashion for long. She is ingenious in devising countless novel accessories to her dress, and adding to its effect. She adorns herself with embroidery, with lace, and with jewels, and, if need be, with flowers, that she may be irresistibly attractive. A Frenchwoman endeavours to supplement those gifts bestowed upon her by nature by the refinements of the toilet. She maintains that fashion is never ridiculous, because good sense is never wanting in France to curb extravagance, and good taste will ever preserve the harmonious proportions that are an inherent necessity in dress. It has been said by a woman of tact and observation, “It is perhaps allowable to be sentimental in a sky-blue bonnet, but one must not cry in a pink one.” This remark as to the fitness of dress shows that Frenchwomen are properly attentive to the harmony that should exist between the moral state of a person and the garments suitable for her wear. Mme. Emile de Girardin observes acutely, “There is but one way of wearing a beautiful gown, and that is to forget it.” “Go where you will,” wrote (in 1835) the travelled Englishwoman Mrs. Trollope, “and you see French fashions, but only in Paris do you see how they should be worn.... The dome of the Invalides, the towers of Notre-Dame, the column of the Place Vendôme, the windmills of Montmartre belong to Paris less essentially and less exclusively than the style of a bonnet, a cap, a shawl, a curl, or a glove ... when worn by a Parisian in the city of Paris.” It is therefore perfectly true to say that a history of fashion in women’s dress in France has a singular likeness to a history of the French female character. There exists not a woman, according to Mme. de Genlis, who does not possess at least one secret in the art of dress, and that secret she is sure to keep to herself. In France, the classic land of fancy, the empire of Fashion has assuredly been more deeply felt than elsewhere. From time immemorial Frenchwomen have altered their fashions each succeeding day. An eminently French poet was thinking of his countrywomen when he composed the following lines, which sum up all that has been said on our present interesting subject:—