"It is false," she said; "I shall never be will be your wife;" and in the kiss that the wife of Richard Ford!” sealed this bond their hearts leaped to their lips," and vowed a constancy that death "You tell me so, when not an hour since I heard your mother receiving congratula-alone could sever. tions on your approaching marriage? How am I to believe you?" "Because I tell you." "You tell me what?" "That he has already asked me, and I have refused to marry him." Geoffrey Dynecourt staggered and turned pale as death. "And, sir," she continued haughtily, "now that I have added to my other sins in showing you how easily I can betray a confidence which noble-minded women consider sacred, it is time we parted," and she turned to leave him. But Mr. Dynecourt grasped her arm and drawing her towards him, said, in a voice choked with emotion, "Audrey, for the sake of God who sees both our hearts, don't let us part like this. Have mercy upon me. Show me some pity, or I shall go mad. Have you nothing, nothing more to say to me?" She lifted up her face, white to the lips, and looking for an instant into the eager, passionate eyes whose gaze seemed intense enough to read her thoughts, answered slowly, "Yes-that-I - love you with all my heart!" and then cold, undemonstrative Audrey threw her arms round this man's neck, and her tears rained upon his breast. He did not attempt to hush her, or to still her sobs, he only held her as if defying the whole world to tear her from him. "Audrey," he whispered hoarsely," "you are not deceiving yourself and me? It is love, not pity, that you are giving me?" The tightening of her arms was her only answer. Have they been hours together, or has time stood still, that the light looks only a shade dimmer than it did when they entered this garden of paradise? Around nothing is changed, all is the very same except the two who are walking towards the house. Can this soft April expression, and these liquid, loving eyes belong to the cold, haughty-looking woman, whose face seemed chiselled out of marble? Is it possible that Geoffrey Dynecourt has ever looked stern and relentless, with hard lines about a mouth where now you could almost see dimples? "And you are sure you never really ceased to love me?" Never; I used to hate myself, because I could not help loving you so madly." 66 And I have lain and cried myself to sleep, thinking of our bitter parting, and that you had forgotten me." "Oh, Audrey, how could I, how could any man who had ever loved you, cease to love you? My darling, night after night I have watched your window, and as I passed the house I have rested my hand against the wall, because inside was the treasure whose image filled my heart." it "We have both suffered!" she said. 66 'We have indeed, dearest, but how small seems to the joy that I feel now! Oh! Audrey, I could ask you every moment if you love me, for the ecstasy of hearing you say you do." And I could listen to the question for ever, so sweet is it to know that you want my love." 66 mo We must go in," he said; "I dare not keep you out longer, and yet to meet other "You know I am poor, and that I never people now seems more than I can bear." expect to be otherwise; that I can give you We only part until to-morrow, and my nothing but the necessaries of life; that I thoughts will not leave you for one ask you to share cares, anxieties, and per-ment; " then with her old gaiety she added, haps troubles of which you have known"Now let us gather up all our energies to nothing hitherto. What do you say?" meet the attack with boldness; for it fails She no longer hid her face, but looking at me to think where the people imagine we him answered, "That if you will take me, I can be." A CORRESPONDENT Writes: "Before the mitrailleuse or mitrailleur becomes domesticated among us, would it not be well to give it a name pronounceable by the rank and file? At the Tower on Saturday I heard a beefeater call the nine-shell mortar standing in the yard a good-sized miter-you,' which is about as near a shot as we can expect from men who do not happen to know French. Why not call it a revolver, or cannon-revolver? "' Pall Mall Gazette. From Fraser's Magazine. FASHIONS IN HAIR AND HEAD DRESSES.* THERE are three facts which the advocates of the Rights of Women, so far as these are based upon an alleged equality of the sexes, will find it extremely difficult to get over: 1. The peculiar functions of the fair sex touching the continuation of the species: 2. That no woman has ever mani- | fested the highest order of genius in any walk of literature or art: 3. That woman have never been able to emancipate themselves from the tyranny of fashion, however absurd, ridiculous, destructive to beauty, or ruinous to health. Without entering on the main question, or seeking to break a lance with Mr. Mill, we wish to call attention to the third of these social phenomena and point the concomitant or resulting moral. was adroitly twitched off, the bewildered owner looked round for it in vain; an accomplice confused and impeded under the pretence of assisting him, and the traybearer made off."* Whilst this custom lasted, the being wigged was as marked a step in the adolescent's approach to manhood as being breeched, and was postponed as long as possible by prudent parents with a view to economy. The second wife of Racine wrote thus to Jean-Baptiste, his son by his first; who, on becoming secretary of embassy in Holland, was obliged to conform to the fashion: Your father deeply regrets the necessity which you say you are under of wearing a wig. He leaves the decision to the ambassador. When your father is in better health he will order M. Marguery to make you such a one as you require. Madame la Comtesse de Gramont is very sorry for you The history of masculine costumes is un-that you should lose the attraction which doubtedly a stinging satire on the male sex. your hair gave you It comprises every variety of vestment or device by which the human form could be disguised, disfigured, or distorted. But if not more becoming, it has gradually become more rational; ease and comfort are pursued with even an undue disregard of appearances; and the movements of the most consummate exquisite are free and unfettered, except when he occasionally indulges in tight boots. The greatest improvement is in the head; i.e. the outside; especially in the general abandonment of the peruke. Wigs, meant to pass for the natural hair of the wearer, are still to be detected by a critical observer, though daily getting rarer; but the formal and avowed peruke, a costly and inconvenient article, has been permanently laid aside except by the judicial body and the bar. Even the bishops have succeeded in discarding it after a prolonged struggle; in the course of which one of them (Pelham, Bishop of Chichester) is reported to have knelt in vain to George III. for permission to begin the innovation. Two curious facts are recorded by M. Feuillet de Conches, showing the value and importance of the wig. The one, that Kant's wig, immediately on his death, was sold for thirty thousand florins, equivalent to nearly three thousand pounds sterling, and on being put up to auction some years afterwards fetched twelve thousand thalers, or rather more than half. The other, for which no authority is given, that when, after the battle of Ramillies, Marshal Villeroy's perruque à nœud espagnol, found amonst his baggage, was brought to Marlborough, the Duke put it on exultingly as the crowning triumph of the day. Lord Macaulay, who insists that avarice was the master passion of Marlborough's life, would probably have contended that he thus appropriated Villeroy's wig from motives of economy. A curious instance of the utility of a wig is related in a modern book of travels. An emigrant on his way to the back settlements of North America was pursued by a savage bent on scalping him. He was overtaken, and the pursuer's grasp was on his head, preparatory to the operation. But he wore a wig, which came off; and the savage was so startled by the incident that he abandoned the meditated victim and ran away. The best part of a century has elapsed since we, of the masculine gender, have emancipated ourselves from this tyrant custom, whilst women were never more completely subjected to it than now. They are not content with one phase of the folly: they insist not merely on making them * Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1866. ebon tresses and complexions embrowned and enriched by their sun. 66 These (continues M. Feuillet de Conches) "no doubt had their price: no one knew this better than the Abbé. But after all he was in search of those splendid and voluptuous creatures crowned with gold by the illustrious painters; and perhaps in such a disposition the beautiful Corbeau Noir* of the Regent would only have excited his disdain. He knew by heart his Voiture and his Sarrasin; but he longed for something better than Paulet la Lionne ; † and all his poetry was out of joint. He re selves top-heavy by chignons or masses of false tresses, but on changing the natural colour of their hair, however suited to their complexion, for any artificial tint which may happen to have been brought into temporary vogue by an Anonyma or notorious member of the demi-monde. It is an undoubted fact that the fashion for golden, yellow, and light-auburn hair was imported into this country from Paris, where it was set by ladies of a class whose very existence would have been ignored not only by our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, but by the bevy of beauties who attended the first drawing-room of Queen Victoria.*quired at least the Lavinia of the Louvre And yet it might be traced far back to a classic, romantic, pictorial, or poetic source: it was equally irresistible in Rome when Rome was the mistress of the world, and in Venice when Venice was the recognized Queen of the Adriatic: we find it illustrated or recorded by the pens of Ovid and Catullus and the pencils of Titian and Giorgione. The Chloes, Pyrrhas, and Cynthias, as well as the Lauras, Lucretias, aad Leonoras, were blondes; and the manner in which they acquired or increased their indispensable attractiveness in this respect has supplied materials for many a curious chapter in the history of morals and manners. Titian, or the original of the female figure in Giorgione's Astrologer of the Manfrini Gallery, or that fine personification of Venice, with eyes of limpid blue, on the ceiling of the Doge's Palace by Paul Veronese - Venice crowned and triumphant, displaying a superb form where nothing is out of harmony: Et qui laisse a demi, sur son front orgueilleux, veux. But all bloomed around him in the usual order of nature, scattering as at all times the divers shades of beauty, regardless of When the Abbé de Bernis arrived at the caprices of art and the exclusive Venice to fulfil his functions as ambassador, vanities of the world. In a word, the he immediately set about looking and en- brunette predominated the decided, proquiring for the famous blondes, so warmly nounced brunette, with her prompt, rapid and variously tinted, of the Venetian school glance of sovereignty or sensibility, imof painters from Carpaccio downwards, a perious or subdued. In vain did he fretype differing widely from what passes quent the popular fairs of the parishes; in under the designation of "fair" in this vain did he attend with the discriminating country. Judging from the portraits and glance of a connoisseur those exciting relihistorical masterpieces of this school, he gious solemnities, those fètes, which roused expected to find Venice a vast paradise of the whole population, and brought forth blondes from the lightest shades of gold or from the old quarters of Castello and Canaflaxen to those little removed from auburn, reggio these types, preserved as it were chestnut, or red. To his ineffable disap-under glass, of antique Venice — no Lavinia, pointment and surprise, he found living neither in the churches, nor in the circles, blondes as rare as gardens and flowers at nor under the mysteries of the gondola, nor Venice; and instead of them he was every- in the Place St.-Marc, where beauty maniwhere encountered by brunettes with glossy fested itself in the good old times as a traditional product of the sun. Hardly anywhere a living sample of those ancient masses of yellow hair (flavescentes) with which every one of the women of the Supper of Paul Veronese (now in the Louvre) "Une Anglaise longtemps nommee Miss Anonyma, qui dompte les plus fougueux chevaux comme une ecuyere de cirque, qui se mele sans scrupules aux groupes des amazones du grande monde, aux matrones, aux misses de la Nobility et de la Gentry a Hyde Park, qui fait piaffer ses fins coursiers a de grandes chasses aristocratiques With such array Harpalyce bestrode Her Thracian courser c'est elle qui la premiere s'est dore les cheveux au moven de drogues, et qui rayonne sous la criniere leonine comme le blond Pbebus. Une autre, une Anglaise encore, qui s'est decoree du nom le plus digne des perles d'Orient, jadis si fort prisees a Venise: qui le dispute de teinture et de blond factice avec sa compatriote de Hyde Park, eclabousse Paris de son luxe."- Les Femmes blondes, p. 139. * This name (Black Crow) was given by the Regent to one of his favourites, the Marquise de Parabere. An habituee of the Hotel de Rambouillet, celebrated by Voiture and Sarrasin, so called from the tawny colour of her hair. Reine des animaux, adorable Lionne Dont la douce fureur ne fait mourir personne, was adorned, as well as the other feminine covered with a cement of sand and lime to creations of the master." to protect them from the rain. It is in these The same lively writer, whom we have that the Venetian women may be seen as rather paraphrased than translated, goes on often and indeed oftener than in their to ask whether this seeming change or chambers; it is there that, with their heads transformation was owing to an exceptional exposed to the full ardour of the sun during caprice of nature?"No, assuredly: the whole days, they strain every nerve cause must be sought in the variations of augment their charms, as if they needed it, fashion in which women delight, in their as if the constant use of so many methods levity and mutability-Varium et muta- known to all did not expose their natural bile semper.' In the sixteenth century, beauty to pass for no better than artificial. those who were not naturally blondes During the hours when the sun darts its became so artificially. The Venetian paint- most vertical and scorching rays they reers of the period did no more than repro- pair to these boxes and condemn themselves duce what they had constantly before their to broil in them unattended. Seated there, eyes." The general agreement amongst they keep on wetting their hair with a them to paint only blondes is a sufficient sponge dipped in some elixir of youth preproof that in this country of brunettes there pared with their own hands or purchased. were no longer brunettes. To be blonde They moisten their hair afresh as fast as it had become an art; and what at first, under is dried by the sun, and it is by the unceasCarpaccio, at the end of the fifteenth cen- ing renewal of this operation that they tury, was still but a caprice of coquetry, become what you see them, blondes. When had become later, under Titian and Paul engaged in it they throw over their ordinary Veronese, the dream and the necessity dress a peignoir or dressing-gown, of the of the generality of Venetian women. finest white silk, which they call schiavonetto. Every traveller learned in art, arriving They wear on their heads a straw hat withfor the first time at Venice, must have felt out a crown, so that the hair drawn through the same surprise as the Abbé de Bernis. the opening may be spread upon the borWe ourselves, Venetians, in order to ex-ders. This hat, doing double duty as a plain for you the past in comparison with the present, were naturally led to the study of the origin, the means, and the results of this episode in our manners; and the documents, the evidences of all sorts that we then collected on this subject, are calculated, we think, especially at this time, to interest public curiosity in France" - and he might well add in England, where the fashion has been revived in its most extravagant and mischievous form, to the terror of husbands and fathers, whose purses are laid under heavy contribution to pay for what offends their notions of propriety and their taste. A single extract from the many curious books cited to throw light on this topic will suffice to show how the dames of Venice set to work to acquire the coveted attraction, and what dangers they incurred, what privations they endured, in the attainment of it. The Strasburg goose, fastened to the floor before a fire to enlarge its liver, affords the closest parallel to the fair, or would be fair, Venetian, with her dripping head exposed to the sun, as Cesare Vecellio, writing in 1589, pictures her: The houses of Venice are commonly crowned with little constructions in wood, resembling a turret without a roof. On the ground these lodges or boxes are formed of masonry, floored like what are called terrazzi at Florence and Naples, and drying-line for the hair and a parasol to The precise duration of this practice is left in doubt. The fashion that led to it certainly lasted long enough to exercise a marked influence on art, and we learn from the same authority that it spread rapidly, invading all Italy, if not all Europe." He traces it at Rome, Naples, and Paris, and shows how the provinces were inoculated with it by the provincial great ladies, the wives of the governors and presidents, who uniformly appeared with coiffures blondes, natural or artificial, interwoven with pearls and jewels. Pearls were especially in request, although we nowhere read of the ropes of pearls on which Mr. Disraeli expatiates in Lothair. "Look here," exclaimed the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI., opening a casket full of pearls, and displaying them to the envoy of Hercules of Ferrara, whose son was a suitor for the hand of Lucretia - "Look here. All this is for my Lucretia! I wish her to be the princess of all Italy who has the finest and the greatest number of pearls There still flourishes at Paris, unaffected by politics or war, a man milliner, who exercises an almost unlimited authority over the female world of fashion. If we are not misinformed, he is by birth an Irishman medical knowledge was almost exclusively and began life as an artist. He takes empirical and rarely attained to the dignity measure at a glance of the figure, form, age, of science, the most celebrated physicians height, complexion and expression of a did not disdain to minister to female vanity, customer, and dictates the resulting de- and grow rich on female credulity. Dr. cision without appeal. Such or such a Marinello, of Modena, after establishing his costume is best suited to her as regards reputation by his Luminare Majus or cat, colour, and materials, and such only Light of Apothecaries and Treasure of will he condescend to make. It is not her Herborists," published in 1562 a treatise on fancy or vanity, but a thing of infinitely the adornment of woman, Gli Ornamenti more importance to himself and society, his delle Donne, which became their gospel. own reputation, that is at stake. It is this He thus concludes his chapter of Recipes:confidence or insolence that has made his fortune. He is as difficult of approach as a lord chamberlain or a prime minister. On the eve of a grand reception at the Tuileries or a fancy ball, a long line of coroneted carriages fills his street, and his ante-chamber, is crowded with clients in full attire, each of whom undergoes the most careful inspection in her turn, lest the effect anticipated by the master should be marred by the maladroitness of the maid. We learn from Vecellio that the Venice of his day could boast of more than one artist in costume who was held in equal honour and authority. Speaking of the rich stuffs and brocades for which Venice was famous, he says that the inventor was a certain Bartolomeo da Calice, a Venetian of wonderful ingenuity, a perfect gentleman in manner and behaviour, greatly cherished by the nobility. "Princes sought to be personally acquainted with him, and to be supplied with his commodities. He was held in singular honour by the most serene and magnificent Duke of Mantua, and he supplied even the establishment of the Grand Turk. Along with this excellent man there were other tyrants of fashion, illustrious composers, patricians of the needle and scissors. There was, for example, one Messer Giovanni, who kept an establishment near the church of San Lio, and scattered precious stones and pearls in robes and tunics. Language had not expression sublime enough to exalt to the clods this miracle of creation, this artist of such richness of ideas, of such profundity in the art of embellishing, of so much science, as the phrase went. He was the rarissimo, the incomparable, to enrich fashion with his inventions. The finest gondolas swarmed about his temple, to such an extent that the Council of Ten took alarm, forbade the usage of pearls, and scattered consternation through the camp of female worshippers." It stands to reason that the charlatans and the quacks of the period vied with one another in specifics and recipes for bestowing beauty or restoring youth. So long as ourable ladies, that the application of so many There is one penalty which no amount of The woman who has once taken to painting and colouring must go on painting and colouring; rarely, if ever, does the complexion regain its bloom, the skin its smoothness, or the hair its gloss. In most cases the operator must go on deepening the hue, and in no case can he or she be sure of the shade or tint which successive applications will produce. A lady who wishes to continue golden or flaxen may come out red or brown in her own despite. One popular novelist (Mr. Warren, in Ten Thousand a Year) has recorded what befel an ambitious youth who, having made an abundant and confiding use of a celebrated tincture, awoke one fine morning in a condition that elicited from his housekeeper the by no means flattering comparison to a monkey, his hair having turned |