I, the writer of these lines, have known many young girls quite distressed by their healthy appearance, their rosy cheeks, and fresh complexions. “It looked so common,” they said. As if the brilliant colouring of nature were not the incomparable source of all beauty. More than one young girl who longed to look consumptive, ended by becoming so in reality, by dint of depriving herself of proper nourishment, which she feared might make her grow stout and “material.” The return to the Middle Ages was likewise manifested by numerous costumes taken from the periods of which we treated at the beginning of this history. Who is that lady? Is she the Châtelaine of Coucy? She wears a long train, an enormous pearl necklace, and hanging sleeves like those of Marguerite of Burgundy; the alms-bag suspended from her waist, and her carved jewellery, make her resemble a woman of the fourteenth century. Not so, however. She is the wife of a rich shopkeeper, and has been present at the performances of plays by Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas. Does not that other fair lady belong to the court of Charles VI.? No; you make a mistake. She has only insisted on her milliner dressing her like Mdlle. Georges in her stage dress of Isabeau de Bavière, the principal character in the play of “Perrinet Leclerc.” Not only the public resorts of Longchamps and the Tuilleries, but the French and Italian Opera Houses, the Opera Comique, the Théâtre-Français, and the large theatres of the Boulevards exercise the greatest influence at the present day over the caprices of Fashion. An extraordinary discrepancy exists between the character of women and the garments they choose to wear. A sweet and gentle girl has her hair dressed like that of the infanticide Norma, and the best of mothers seeks to imitate the costume of that arch-poisoner, the Marquise de Brinvilliers. Masked and fancy-dress balls were crowded with historical characters, from Frédégonde to Mary Stuart, and from Catherine de Médicis to Charlotte Corday. The Greek and Roman styles were replaced by those of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. We find the following paragraph in a Review of 1834: “Fashions, like Empires, have their Revolutions, which in former times were slow and gradual; but at the present day they follow the spirit of the age, and share in its instability. Each century was formerly stamped in the same image, and the dress of our forefathers might have served, in a certain sense, to mark the dates of our history. But at the present day, Fashion, greedily seeking after novelty, appeals to every era and every period, borrowing from each, and only takes possession of one costume in order to throw it aside for another, in a few months, or weeks, or even days.”