Hair-dressing was a difficult art, requiring time and labour. Country ladies employed a resident female hair-dresser in their house, by the year, and on the occurrence of any family festival she would be kept at work nearly the whole day. In order to show the importance of this subject, we quote from the “Journal de Paris” of February 10, 1777, to which was added a supplementary engraving with the following explanation:— “We add to our issue of this day an engraving representing two different dressings of the hair, back and side views; they are drawn from nature by a clever artist who has been kind enough to give us his assistance. The figures 1 and 2 refer to one of these methods, the figures 3 and 4 to the other. “If by this attempt we succeed in giving pleasure to those ladies who are included among our subscribers, we shall be happy to renew an expenditure that proves our zeal in their service.” No satire was intended by the above publication. The “Journal de Paris” was a grave production, and the prints it published were of “moderate” head-dresses, if I may so express myself, of no excessive height, powdered, and such as might be worn by bourgeoises without appearing extraordinary. Besides the fashions we have described, there were others from 1774 to 1789, viz. “Grecques à boucles badines” (or Greek with playful ringlets), “à l’ingénue,” “à la conseillière,” “l’oiseau royal,” “chien couchant,” “les parterres galants,” “les calèches retroussées,” and many others, the description of which would fill volumes.[47] Marie Antoinette continued to rule the fashionable world; nor can we be surprised that the flattery of courtiership “took up the tale.” In honour of Louis XVI.’s accession, hats were invented under the name of “delights of the Augustan age,” and a colour called “queen’s hair,” of a pretty blonde tint. For many years a great rivalry had subsisted between the male and female hair-dressers, and towards 1775 an amusing law-suit was commenced between the former and the wig-making barbers. “We are,” contended the hair-dressers, “essentially ladies’ hair-dressers.... What are the duties of barbers? To shave heads, and purchase the severed hair; to give the needful plait by means of fire and iron to locks that are no longer living; to fix them in tresses with the help of a hammer; to arrange the hair of a Savoyard on the head of a marquis; to remove the attribute of their sex from masculine chins with a sharp blade; all these are purely mechanical functions that have no connexion with our art....”