The furniture of her sleeping apartment—­the bath in daily use—­the ample folds of silk and velvet which covered the windows—­the perfumes which filled the room—­the rich laces and dresses which adorned the wardrobe, were widely different from the ephemeral and insufficient articles by which they have been replaced.  My opinion is daily receiving confirmation, for every thing belonging to the last age is daily coming again into fashion, and I hope soon to see totally expelled all those fashions of Greece and Rome, which did admirably well under the climate of Rome or Messina, but are ill adapted for our vent du bize and cloudy atmosphere.  A piece of muslin suspended on a gilt rod, is really of no other use but to let a spectator see that he is behind the curtain.  It is the same with the imitation tapestry—­the walls six inches thick, which neither keep out the heat in summer, nor the cold in winter.  All the other parts of modern dress and furniture are comprised in my anathema, and will always continue to be so.

It is said that every thing is simplified and brought down to the reach of the most moderate fortunes.  That is true in one sense; that is to say, our confectioner has muslin curtains and gilt rods at his windows, and his wife has a silk cloak as well as ourselves, because it is become so thin that it is indeed accessible to every one, but it keeps no one warm.  It is the same with all the other stuffs.  We must not deceive ourselves; we have gained nothing by all these changes.  Do not say, “So much the better, this is equality.”  By no means; equality is not to be found here, any more than it is in England, or America, or anywhere, since it cannot exist.  The consequence of attempting it is, that you will have bad silks, bad satins, bad velvets, and that is all.

The throne of fashion has encountered during the Revolution another throne, and it has been shattered in consequence.  The French people, amidst their dreams of equality, have lost their own hands.  The large and soft arm-chairs, the full and ample draperies, the cushions of eider down, all the other delicacies which we alone understood of all the European family, led only to the imprisonment of their possessors; and if you had the misfortune to inhabit a spacious hotel, within a court, to avoid the odious noise and smells of the street, you had your throat cut.  That mode of treating elegant manners put them out of fashion; they were speedily abandoned, and the barbarity of their successors still so lingers amongst us, that every day you see put into the lumber-room an elegant Grecian chair which has broken your arm, and canopies which smell of the stable, because they are stuffed with hay.