From the French of M. A. CHALLAMEL.

Fashion is the expositor of our habits and our social relations, from the standpoint of costume. It is a much more serious subject than it may seem at first; far from serving only as a source of frivolous talk, even when it is specially concerned with our dress and ornamentation, the subject of fashion, it has been wisely said, has its value as a moral sign-post, and supplies the historian, the philosopher, and the novelist with a guide to the prevailing ideas of the time.

It is of the French fashions we speak here; for in France, the land of classic fancy, the empire of fashion, has assuredly been more deeply felt than elsewhere. Even in primitive Gaul were the fashions fixed, but their common sense is to be commended. The Gallic woman was demanded by fashion to follow a strict course of bathing. In every locality baths were established, and they were to her a delight, a duty, and a necessity. At Marseilles young girls were forbidden by custom the use of wine, lest it should injure the ivory whiteness of their complexion. To guard against excess in dress, the law required that the highest marriage portion of a woman should not exceed one hundred golden crowns. The history of political events has had more influence on fashion than may be generally supposed. Upon the conquest of the country by CÆsar, Roman manners were introduced into primitive Gaul, and the Gallic women, declining to be beaten in the art of pleasing, as their husbands had in arms, adopted the fashions of Rome. Extravagance in dress became boundless. We have in this early period the beginning of two modern fashions. Some ladies chose to wear garments which, on account of their breadth, were called by Horace palissades. From these the crinoline appears to have been derived. Ovid observes that to equalize the shoulders, if one were slightly higher than the other, it was customary to drape lightly the lower of the two. Thus originated padding. These Gallo-Roman ladies were elegant in all their surroundings, and the Frenchwoman of to-day has not a better sorted wardrobe. Parasols, mirrors, fans, perfumes, pomatums, and cosmetics—all these things were known to the Gallo-Roman period.

It was not until about the tenth century that dress in France became original. The women of the provinces adopted costumes of their own, and, at their will, added details. Indeed, if the history of fashion is studied, it will be seen that the original type of dress has not changed. It is the subordinate parts that undergo continual alteration. The skirt, the tunic (or overskirts), the mantle, the cap and reticule have always existed since the time of our Gallic mothers. One modification of the skirt produced a great furore in religious circles—it was the trail to the gown. A disgusted prior said: “The tail gives a woman the look of a serpent,” and the council of Montpellier forbade the appendix in question on penalty of excommunication. No fashion ever brought down more anathemas on the fair sex than the “hennins.” It was introduced, too, in a period when it would naturally be supposed that the very terror of the time would have destroyed all passion for dress and capricious fashions—the melancholy time of the Hundred Years’ War. This hennin was a kind of two-horned head-dress, made of muslin, stiffly starched and kept in place by fine wire, and of most exaggerated size. Paradin says: “It was peaked like a steeple, or with tall horns; from these horns hang flags, capes, fringe and other material. Such head-dresses were naturally very expensive, and husbands were loud in complaint.” Confessors and monks added their curses. They considered the hennin as an invention of the evil one, and organized a deadly warfare against the obnoxious article; but this uproar availed nothing, the women only gave up their hennins from a caprice similar to that which had invented them.

One strange fashion of the whole Middle Ages related to the color of the hair. Fair hair alone was considered beautiful. On this point the French and the Greeks were of one mind. In Shakspere’s play of “As You Like It” we find Rosalind as she hoots at Phoebe, laughing at her “black silk-hair” as a mark of her plainness. The word “fashion” seems to convey an almost absolute sense of novelty, but that which is new to-day may be but a revival of what is old. “There is nothing new under the sun,” applies with special force to fashion. The pretty trifles worn by women of to-day are nothing but the reproduction of similar ornaments worn by the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, or the Gauls, and all our novelties find their origin many centuries in the past.