whitened, in every third page, by the contents of the power-puff. Hairdressers were also serviceable to their species, by maintaining and diffusing a taste for anecdote. Even ministers of state were occasionally indebted to the coiffeur for their principal knowledge of human nature, and for the better part of their wit.

The ministerial influence of barbers has ever been considerable. The grand sultan's barber is, to this day, the pivot of affairs, the focus of revolutions, the ladder of rising fortunes, and the Tarpeian rock of functionaries on the wane. Under Louis the Fourteenth, the coiffeurs, male and female, were important personages; and they figure largely in the memoirs of that day. Martin la Vienne, and Mademoiselle la Borde, have become historical characters, as much as the heroes and beauties they dressed; and the "coiffure à la paysanne," and " les boucles de Montgobert," form epochs in the history of nations. Under the regency, an "Encyclopédie Perruquière" appeared, illustrating the mysteries of the craft by one hundred and twenty engravings of different orders of perruques, which gave the idea, some years after

wards, of a work on the same plan, by Le Sieur le Gros, coiffeur to the court of Louis the Fifteenth. The solemn importance attached to this volume by its author, who announced it to the great Catherine of Russia, is an admirable satire on the frivolity of the day; the title was " Livre d'Estampes de l'Art de la Coiffure des Dames Françaises, gravés sur les dessins originaux d'après mes accommodages, avec le Traité en abrégé d'entretenir et de conserver les Cheveux naturels."*-And yet Madame de Genlis 66 Il says, y a quarante-cinq ans que les femmes auroient trouver de l'indécence à se faire coiffer par des hommes."+ M. Le Gros gave a still further dignity to the art, by opening an academy, which he divided into the same number of classes as the academy of sciences at Paris; and actually furnished it with thirty models, that were not exactly "d'après l'antique."

Under Louis the Sixteenth, the hair-dressers are said to have been accompanied by les physiogno

* A book of engravings of the art of hair-dressing for the ladies of France, after my own designs, with an abridged treatise on the conservation of the natural hair.

"Five and forty years ago, the women would have thought it indecent to have their hair dressed by men."

mistes, who pronounced on the style to be adopted on each head, according to the nature of the countenance. One of these Lavaters of the toilet entering, with his employer, into the dressingroom of a new patient, fresh arrived from England, threw him into no small consternation by the earnestness of his scrutinizing regard. Full of John Bullish notions, of French tyranny, lettres de cachet, and, of course, of his own importance in the eyes of the government, the Englishman saw nothing in the penetrating looks of the artist, but espionnage and "à cul de basse fosse :”—he was actually preparing for a knock-down blow, and a run, when the solemn figure relieved him from his fright, and left the room, exclaiming, Figure de marron, marronnez Monsieur.”

66

The revolution came, and kings and coiffeurs fell together.-Nature vindicated her rights-hairdressers lost theirs and beauty and purity resumed their privileges under the name of Greek

costume.

The enameller was also, in former times, a profession of much profit and occupation: not such enamellers as the Bones and Bates of the present

day, nor as the Petitots of the past; but good tradesman-like artists, who kept shops well stored with enamelled snuff, patch, and rouge boxes, and every article of domestic usage, to which they could apply their art. Who, that ever rummaged her mother's drawers, and found the watch-chains of her grandmother, ponderous as jack-chains, and fastened with hooks massy as flesh-forks, does not remember the enamelled trinkets suspended from it-eggs, anchors, bird-cages, and watchboxes, with bottles for bergamotte, and beetles filled with thieves' vinegar, (the eau de cypre, and the mille-fleurs of the belles of the last century, who always smelled like a pot of pomatum, or a pickled cucumber)?-the least prized of the senses has its march of intellect, tout comme un autre, and the strength of perfumes is no bad indication of the state of society.

But, alas, for the sciences! that they too should "bear but the perfume and suppliance of a moment;" and be brought in and out of fashion, like a beret of Herbault, or a robe of Victorine. Yet so it is, and was, and ever will be, as the wants and

exigencies of society have occasion for the aid of different pursuits.

Towards the end of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, and the beginning of that of Louis the Fifteenth, (including the regency,) astronomy, taking the place of polemics, raged like an epidemic. Men, women, and children, leaving this world to take care of itself, got into "other and better worlds;" and wits, lost on earth, were all to be found, like Orlando's, in the moon. Women's eyes were no longer the only lights that helped poets to similes. Celestial bodies succeeded to terrestrial; Love, no longer blind, never appeared without a telescope; rendezvous were given in bosquets and on terraces, to gaze on the "chaste cold moon;" hearts and planets disappeared together; and ladies were so intently engaged in studying the principles of Newton, that they forgot their own; and gave practical demonstration that, in going astray, women's "stars are more in fault than they."

But when Newton had ceased to act upon the imagination, by fresh discoveries of striking and