Although the subject has reached the limits we have by the very nature of this work assigned to it, we think it well to overstep them somewhat, in order briefly to indicate the last connecting link between modern fashions and those of former periods.

[Illustration:  Figs. 433 and 434.—­Costumes of the Ladies and Damsels of the Court of Catherine de Medicis.—­After Cesare Vecellio.]

Under Francis I., the costumes adopted from Italy remained almost stationary (Fig. 432).  Under Henri II. (Figs. 433 and 434), and especially after the death of that prince, the taste for frivolities made immense progress, and the style of dress in ordinary use seemed day by day to lose the few traces of dignity which it had previously possessed.

Catherine de Medicis had introduced into France the fashion of ruffs, and at the beginning of the fourteenth century, Marie de Medicis that of small collars.  Dresses tight at the waist began to be made very full round the hips, by means of large padded rolls, and these were still more enlarged, under the name of vertugadins (corrupted from vertu-gardiens), by a monstrous arrangement of padded whalebone and steel, which subsequently became the ridiculous paniers, which were worn almost down to the commencement of the present century; and the fashion seems likely to come into vogue again.

[Illustration:  Fig. 435.—­Costume of a Gentleman of the French Court, of the End of the Sixteenth Century.—­Fac-simile of a Miniature in the “Livre de Poesies,” Manuscript dedicated to Henry IV.]

Under the last of the Valois, men’s dress was short, the jacket was pointed and trimmed round with small peaks, the velvet cap was trimmed with aigrettes; the beard was pointed, a pearl hung from the left ear, and a small cloak or mantle was carried on the shoulder, which only reached to the waist.  The use of gloves made of scented leather became universal.  Ladies wore their dresses long, very full, and very costly, little or no change being made in these respects during the reign of Henry IV.  At this period, the men’s high hose were made longer and fuller, especially in Spain and the Low Countries, and the fashion of large soft boots, made of doeskin or of black morocco, became universal, on account of their being so comfortable.

We may remark that the costume of the bourgeois was for a long time almost unchanged, even in the towns.  Never having adopted either the tight-fitting hose or the balloon trousers, they wore an easy jerkin, a large cloak, and a felt hat, which the English made conical and with a broad brim.