it was too late to repent. Napoleon, a captive on a British ship, was passing far away to cruel imprisonment, and to a lingering death. France, bound hand and foot, exhausted and bleeding from chastising blows, could resist no more. sum of three hundred and seven million five hun- | ernment which Napoleon had established. But dred thousand dollars was extorted from the people, to pay the Allies for the expense incurred in crushing the independence of France. An army of one hundred and fifty thousand allied troops were stationed in all the French fortresses along the frontier, to be supported by the French people, for from three to five years, to keep France in subjection. This scene of exultation was closed by a review of the whole Russian army in one field. The mighty host consisted of one hundred and sixty thousand men, including twenty-eight thousand cavalry, and five hundred and forty pieces of cannon. They were assembled upon an immense plain at a short distance from Chalons. At the signal of a single gun fired from a height, three cheers were given by all the troops. The awful roar, never forgotten by those who heard it, reverberated through France, and fell upon the ear of the nation as the knell of death. It was despotism's defiant and exultant yell. Then did one and all, except the few partisans of the Bourbons, bitterly deplore that they had not adhered to the Emperor, and followed those wise counsels which alone could save France. Then did it become evident to every mind, that the only government which could by any possibility be sustained against the encroachment of the Allies and the usurpation of the Bourbons, was the wise and efficient gov MARSHAL NEY. By the Capitulation of Paris it was expressly declared, that "no person should be molested for his political opinions or conduct during the Hundred Days." Wellington and Blucher concluded the capitulation, and their sovereigns ratified it. But the Allies seem never to have paid any regard to their plighted faith. Fifty-eight persons were banished, and three condemned to death. Among these three was Marshal Ney, who had yielded to perhaps the most powerful temptation which had ever been presented to a generous soul, The magnanimity of Napoleon would with eagerness have pardoned such a crime. The noble Marshal, who had fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her, was led out into the garden of the Luxembourg, to be shot like a dog in a ditch. In those days of spiritual darkness, he cherished a profound reverence for the Christian religion. He sent for a clergyman, and devoutly partook of the last sacraments of the gospel, saying, "I wish to die as becomes a Christian." He stood erect, but a few feet from the soldiers, with his hat in his left hand, and his right upon his heart. Fixing for a moment his eagle eye upon the glittering muskets before him, he calmly said, "My comrades, fire on me." Ten bullets pierced his heart, and he fell dead. A warmer heart never beat. A braver man, a kinder friend, a more devoted patriot, never lived. His wife upon her knees had implored of Louis XVIII. the pardon of her husband, but was sternly repulsed. The tidings that he was no more threw her into convulsions, and she soon followed her beloved companion to the grave. Wellington can never escape condemnation for permitting such a violation of national honor. No matter how guilty Ney might have been deemed by the Allies, the capitulation which Wellington had signed pledged his safety. The weight of the world's censure has fallen upon Wellington rather than upon Blucher, for no one expected any thing but barbarism from "Prussia's debauched dragoon." But England's proud Duke, unfortunately, at that time, allowed his mind to be sadly darkened by angry prejudices. THE "MERVEILLEUSE," 1793. every body is at liberty to give it another crack. A shopkeeper might as profitably employ his time in searching for the philosopher's stone, as his eloquence in endeavoring to sell any thing once put under the ban of fashion. The interdict of beauty is upon it. Accursed of good taste has it become, and excommunicated from the depths of every well-filled purse. No matter how becoming it has been considered a few short weeks before, whatever may be its intrinsic merits of elegance, art, or costliness; however much human brains and hands have labored to make it a combination of utility and beauty, it is now a sunken, degraded thing, despised of women and scorned of men, barely tolerated by the necessities of poverty, or reduced to seek a home in the haunts of vice. THE GENERATIONS OF FASHIONS. This caprice, which looks only to change for its aliment, is as old as human invention. I make no doubt that Eve never wore twice the same pattern of fig-leaves, while Adam searched diligently the forests through to diversify the colors of his vegetable breeches. The Polynesian turns to nature for his book of fashions, and seeks to rival the hues of the bird of Paradise in the ample folds of his brilliant-colored "tappas." Every savage finds his greatest wants in the bright gewgaws of civilization. If there be a nation on earth that clings to its old clothes and furniture because they are good and useful, that deprecates change as innovation upon good habits and customs, that does not dive into the bowels of the earth, fish the seas, and penetrate the heavens, racking nature to find material wherewith to distort and crucify nature in form, stuff, and pattern, out of sheer disgust of the old and capricious love for the new, I have yet to discover it. A passion so universal must be productive of more good than evil, or else it would die of neglect. At first glance, nothing appears more unreasonable, and more destructive of excellence, than this devotion to variety. The "love" of one season is the "fright" of the next. No sooner have we reconciled our eyes and shoulders to one fit, and begun to think it tolerable, than we abandon it for some fresh abomination of the tailor or modiste, IF there be one earthly object more deserving and recommence our penance of new-formed inex of pity than another, what do you think it is, curious reader? As a Yankee, with all your inherited traditionary 'cuteness, you will never guess! I leave that to a Frenchman; and, not to keep you longer in suspense-the worst possible policy for an author-I will tell you. It is an "old fashion!" How many delicately-chiseled noses are turned up at that irrevocable sentence of condemnation, while disgust at the sight, and ainazement at the audacity of the shopkeeper, play about the lines of the fairest mouths, as their lovely possessors turn their backs peremptorily upon an article which but a month before was the coveted object of all eyes-" a perfect beauty" -a "sweet love"-with an exclamatory "Pooh! it is old-fashioned." To use an expressive, though vulgar phrase, that is "a clincher." The fate of an old pot is not more hopeless. When once that Mede and Persian fiat has gone forth from feminine lips, pressibles and new-cut whalebone. Every change of coat or boot is another martyrdom. The rack has indeed left the halls of justice, but it has taken up its residence on the counters of St. Crispin and kindred saints. Human flesh has become a mere machine-a sort of clay model-for the masters and mistresses of the shears and needles to fit their garments upon. Bone and muscle are secondary in their system; the primary object is to display their "fashions," which, as they are mainly of late of the "grotesque" order, we may class, according to the views of Ruskin's architecture, rather as the labor of little minds than the repose of great. So in other things. We no sooner combine utility and beauty, forming an article which is truly excellent in itself, than we abandon it, and content ourselves with some crude novelty, to be discarded in its turn, as soon as it has advanced through its several degrees of fashion to any thing | like comfortable excellence. An individual who ventures to like what suits and fits him well, in opposition to the novel and fashionable, becomes a pariah at once. He is abandoned of society; lucky if known as nothing worse than an "odd, old-fashioned fellow," and of no more account in creation than a dead leaf. In usel they are doomed to equal consideration with an old hat, substituting a stale joke for the decided kick, either of which is an effectual barrier to the firmament of fashion. If this love of variety had no other recommendation than to prevent repletion in the purses of the rich, it would still be a social blessing. It feeds, clothes, and houses half the world. It feels the way to artistic perfection, opens the doors to ingenuity, favors invention, and prevents mental stagnation. Costly and annoying to the individual it may be, but to the nation it is beneficial. The very whims of beauty are so much bounty to industry and art. Mere dandyism is the rust of civilization. Like corroded steel, it shows the most where the polish is most brilliant. Paris is the central star of fashion. Whatever is seen elsewhere is a ray from her light, diminishing in lustre as it recedes from that city. The 1793. French under Napolcon, by force of arms, sought to win a universal empire. Failing in this, they have since employed the more subtle weapons of taste and fashion to attain the same end. Their conquests extend with a rapidity that far surpasses the warlike exploits of the "grand Empereur." There is not a race on the globe that does not seem destined to lose its national identities of costumes and habits before the invincible power of French fashions. They have penetrated the huts of the South Sea savages. They march with the rapidity of commerce along the steppes of Central Asia, and have climbed the Chinese wall. The turban of the descendants of the Prophet rolls in the dust before the hat of the infidel. This infiltration of Parisian fashions is seen every where; sometimes with an elegance that rivals Paris itself, but more often with an awkward imitation destructive of every grace of the original. It threatens to subjugate every European costume, however venerable from antiquity or picturesque in effect. The traveler must hast en if he would see what remains of the beautiful or odd in the dresses of the Italian, the national costumes of the Swiss, the furred robes of the Pole, and the medley medieval civilization of the Asiatic and European tribes that now are ruled by not a wide gulf yet to pass, before it can make any thing graceful and comfortable of the stovepipe hat, dismal colors, and swaddling clothes to which it dooms its male devotees, is no matter of doubt at all. It is in the infancy of its empire, and has yet much to learn before mankind will acknowledge its sway an easy one. The most that can now be said in its favor is, that in its rest the Autocrat of all the Russias. The conquests of | effect by the obliteration of national costumes may the modistes are wider than those of the marshals. well be doubted; but whether French taste has A French army of "artistes" have insinuated themselves, as worms into old books and furniture, into every cranny of past civilization. They are rapidly undermining every habit, both of the body and for the body, of the past. At present the adulterine mixture is becoming to neither condition; but before the army of French cooks, dancing-masters, tailors, modistes, coiffeurs, valets, femmes-de-chambres, and mechanics of knick-lessness it may by chance hit upon some combinaknackery, every other knick-knackery and fashion not absolutely Parisian in its origin and education is rapidly giving way. Whether this is an incipient stage of the millennium or not, when mankind are to be all brethren, alike in speech, habits, and rule, remains to be seen. This much we know, that French millinery is the dominant power of civilization. England's Queen and Russia's Czar alike acknowledge its supremacy. Parisian fashion, which, like all others, once had a local character of its own, has now become a cosmopolite, making itself equally at home in Tinbuctoo as in the Champs Elysées. Whether the world will gain in picturesque tion which shall reconcile comfort and beauty. But we very much fear, if it succeeded in this, that it would not allow it to live a month. One secret of Parisian success in the empire of fashion is this: In the past, it cunningly borrowed of all nations every peculiarity that could be turned to account in its own rage for novelty. The Romans admitted the deities of conquered nations into their mythology without scrutiny. Their great scheme of government comprehended every worship, provided it was not purer than their own. Parisians borrowed every hue and cut from rival costumes, and transformed them to their own tastes and purposes. Receiving every "CLASSICAL COSTUME," 1796. thing in the beginning, they have ended by giving every thing, and the whole world now looks to Paris as the arbitress of fashion, as the Jew does to Jerusalem, and the Romanist to Rome, for the seat of their religions. With all this, however, the French once had fashions peculiarly their own. Indeed their empire is of very recent date, and it is well worth our trouble to go back a little, and see by what strange metamorphoses French taste has assumed its present shape. To do this, I shall be compelled to illustrate freely, for two reasons. I detest the technicalities of dress, and if I employed the terms in description, I could neither understand the costumes myself or make them intelligible to my readers; therefore I shall adopt the better plan of letting them see for themselves. After gunpowder had put an end to metallic armor, the French nobles, by the usual force of contradiction, ran into the opposite extreme, and from iron by the pound on their necks, began to wear |