The Umbrella! we behold it in the dreams of our school-days. Here is the severe and sombre Umbrella of the headmaster, symbol of his pedantic authority, when he passed us in review in the cold and damp playground. Here is the Riflard of the poor usher, a celebrated /Pépin/, covered with a mottled cotton-stuff, its bill-headed handle polished by his unctuous clasp. And here, above all, is an Umbrella greeted with loud acclaim, a festive Crusoe, which followed us when out walking, as the sutler follows the regiment on the march, the Umbrella of /Mother Sun/, as we used to call it: /Mother Sun!/ an honest jolly wench, with her head in a silk pocket-handkerchief tied under her chin, who installed herself beneath the shelter of her improvised tent about our playtime, to sell to her noisy /children/ cooling lemonade, fruit, barley-sugar, and little white rolls stuffed with hot sausages. But let us leave these souvenirs, which carry us too far away, and return to the /Sunshade/ between 1830 and 1870. If we wished to show only its transformations during these forty years, we should have to write a volume quite full of coloured vignettes to give a feeble idea of the history which fashion creates in an object of coquetry. About 1834, in the journal called /Le Protée/, we see fashion personified under the traits of a young and pretty woman visiting the finest shops in Paris; she fails not to go to "Verdier, in the Rue Richelieu, for Sunshades," and chooses two--one a full-dress Sunshade, in unbleached silk casing, mounted on a stick of American bindweed, with a top of gold and carved coral; the other in striped wood, having a similar top with a fluted knob, and covered with myrtle green paduasoy, with a satin border. Let us skip over some hundreds of intermediate varieties to look a dozen years afterwards, under the Second Republic, at the Sunshade described by M. A. Challamel in his /History of Fashion/: "As soon," says this writer, "as the first ray of sunshine appeared, ladies armed themselves for their walks or morning calls with little Sunshades, entirely white, or pink, or green. Sometimes the Sunshades called 'Marquises' were edged with lace, which gave them rather a ragged appearance; or having the shape of little Umbrellas, the Sunshades could serve at need against a sudden storm. Very soon we saw Sunshades /à dispositions/ bordered with a figured garland, or a satin stripe of the same colours, or blue or green on unbleached silk, or violet on white or sulphur."