“Il est une déesse inconstante, incommode, Bizarre dans ses goûts, folle en ses ornements, Qui paraît, fuit, revient, renaît en tous les temps; Protée était son père et son nom est la Mode.”[4] Now, Proteus the sea-god, in order to escape from questioning upon the future, changed his shape at pleasure. It might be said that the poet we have just quoted was referring to Parisian ladies in particular; but this would be a mistake; for a great number of elegant women reside in the provinces, and have quite as fervent a devotion to the inconstant goddess as their Parisian sisters. In former times Fashion reserved its great effects and its utmost brilliancy for the rich only; in the present day it pervades every rank of society, and exercises its influence even over the national costume of the peasant; for a cotton gown will now be cut on the same pattern as a velvet one. All Frenchwomen like perpetual change in dress, and foreigners follow French fashions almost implicitly. Spanish women only, actuated by their national pride, refused for a long time to make any change in their costume, yet even they are now beginning to dress “à la Française.” At present the type of feminine dress always originates in Paris, and spreads thence, throughout France, into the most distant regions of Europe, and even into Asia and America. In both those countries our fashion-books are widely circulated. “Paris,” writes a contemporary author, “possesses the undisputed privilege of promulgating sumptuary laws for nations. The fashions of Paris are and will be the fashions of the world; that of which Paris approves will endure; that which Paris condemns must disappear. But for the good taste and the fickleness of Parisians, but for the inventive genius and manual dexterity of their artisans, mankind might be clothed indeed, but never dressed.” And what of womankind? Where is the Frenchwoman, the Englishwoman, the Italian, the German, or the Russian, who does not require her milliner to make her a bonnet on the pattern of those which emanate from a Parisian ‘atelier’? “France,” as Victor Hugo has said, “will always be in fashion in Europe.” Those nations who are least in sympathy with her accept and observe her laws on elegance and ‘ton.’ This can be proved by figures. The exportation of articles of fashion manufactured in France reaches a very high figure; our importations of foreign goods of the same kind are, on the contrary, quite insignificant. The word “fashion” seems to convey to young people an almost absolute sense of novelty. Yet are there distinctions. There is new and new, just as, according to Molière, there are “fagots” and “fagots.” That which is new to-day may be but a revival of what is old, a reminiscence of the past. The axiom, “There is nothing new under the sun,” applies with special force to Fashion.