Possibly this passion for our costumes is to be attributed to the deterioration of the morals of the savages, and if so, even dress has its historical importance and significance, and is the true reflection of morale. It may be that the days of the iron garb were days of iron manners, and also of iron virtue, and that in adopting a silken costume we have put on, and they may be about to adopt a silken laxity of virtue and honor.
We will begin to treat of costume as it was in the days of Louis XIV., the solemn mood and ideas of whom exerted their influence even on dress, and the era which saw all other arts become pompous and labored, also saw costume assume the most complicated character. Costume naturally during this reign was permanent in its character, and when Louis XV. succeeded to the throne he found his courtiers dressed entirely as their fathers had done, and the young king, five years of age, dressed precisely like his great-grandfather, with peruke, cane and breeches. When he had reached the years of discretion, Louis XV. continued to devote himself more to the trifles of the court than to affairs of state.
The following engraving is an illustration taken from a portrait of a celebrated marquis of that day.
This, it will be remembered, was the era when women wore whalebone frame-works to their dresses and caps, or a kind of defensive armor over the chest and body. The fine gentlemen also encased themselves in wires, to distend the hips of their culottes or breeches. This was the costume of the fine gentlemen, and in it kings and heroes appeared on the stage almost without interruption until the days of Talma, if we except the brief and unsuccessful attempt at reform, as far as theatres were concerned, by Le Kain and Mademoiselle Clairon.
The foregoing was the prevailing court costume, the next is the military garb of the day, recalling the costume of Charles XII. of Sweden, and not unlike that of our own Putnam or Mad Anthony Wayne. Thus the lowland gentlemen who fought in ’45, dressed after this mode, were the opposing parties of the armies at Ramilies. As a whole it is not malapropos, and altogether more suitable and proper than the uniforms of our own day. The following is the portrait of a mousquetaire just one century after the time of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artignan, whom Dumas made illustrious.
MAPLE SUGAR.
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