THE TOILETTE IN ITALY.

CHAPTER XXVII.

HE dress of the higher ranks in Italy is all copied from French models; though living in a land where painting and sculpture have for ages passed produced the chefsd'œuvre of the arts, they are uninfluenced by the graceful and elegant models that surround them, and prefer following the various and

volatile fashions of France.

The Roman peasant's dress is usually of a dark

colour; the petticoat is long, the boddice laced across the bosom, the sleeves nearly tight from the shoulders to the wrist, a handkerchief pinned across the bosom, immense earrings, and a curious head-dress of white linen, which lies quite flat upon the head, and the ends hanging down upon the shoulders and back. The boddice is frequently gaily ornamented, and usually of some bright colour, different from the robe or petticoat. The hair hangs in long tresses, and the shoes have immense silver buckles.

The love of finery is very great among the Roman

women, and those that can afford

dress of the Trasteverini, who form a large portion of the population of Rome, distinguishes them from the rest of the Romans. Lady Morgan says: "The men wear a silken net on their heads, à l'Espagnole, a jacket of black velvet thrown on their shoulders, a broad crimson sash, and enormous silver shoe-buckles. The women braid their hair in silken nets, and ornament it with

silver bodkins; and in their gala habit appear in vel

vet boddices, laced with gold, silken petticoats, white and coloured (which discover feet shining with large, showy, silver buckles), and scarlet aprons.

The Massari, or rural stewards of the Roman princes, present a very picturesque appearance. The Roman ferrainolo, or mantle, is thrown over their gaunt figures with great effect; their broad hats are flapped over their eyes, and they carry a gun slung at the side, and a hunting-spear in the hand, which give them, according to Lady Morgan, an air rather military than pastoral.

The female peasantry of Terni wear a singular cuffa (a veil of embroidered linen, projected like a shade over the eyes by a piece of whalebone), showy scarlet jackets, and coloured petticoats.

Lady Morgan mentions the great resemblance between the dress of

the peasantry in parts of the pontifical states to that of the common Irish, the men being muffled to their chins in dark and ragged mantles. To use her own words: "It is remarkable that some of the women of this district wear a head-kerchief precisely like that worn in the remote parts of Ireland; and that others had on the Irish mantle, a piece of bias-cut cloth drawn over the head, almost always of a dingy red. The Irish mantle is, in fact, the Roman cloak, so universally worn by all ranks. Another point of

resemblance was that almost all the women were barelegged, and frequently bare-footed."

Evelyn, in his "Diary," mentions that when he visited Rome in 1645, all the Jews who inhabited that city wore yellow hats.

Lady Morgan states that the female peasants in the neighbourhood of Rome wear white Isis-like headdresses.

At Mola di Gaeta the women roll their long tresses, mingled with silken bands, round their heads, with an antique grace; and the vessels with which they are often seen fetching water from the fountain are generally of a graceful Etruscan form, which adds to the elegance of their appearance.

Lady Morgan, speaking of the magnificence of the dresses of Naples, says that they might be supposed to be the "plunder of a sultan's warbrobe."

Swinburn tells us that "At Naples the women are also very splendid on those days of show; but their hair is then bound up in tissue caps and scarlet nets, a fashion much less becoming than their every-day simple method. Citizens and lawyers are plain enough in their apparel, but the female part of their family vies with the first court ladies in expensive dress, and all the vanities of modish fopperies. Luxury has of late advanced with gigantic strides in Naples. Forty years ago the Neapolitan ladies wore nets and ribbons on their heads, as the Spanish women do to this day, and not twenty of them were possessed of a cap; but hair plainly dressed is a mode now confined to the lowest order of inhabitants, and all distinctions of dress between the wife of a nobleman and of a citizen are entirely laid aside. Among the paysannes may be seen almost every mode of hair

dressing found on the Roman and Grecian coins. The

coiffure of the younger Faustina,

with the coil of hair plaited upon the crown of the head, occurs frequently in the old town; that with the coil lower down, which may more properly be styled Lucilla's head-dress, is common among the younger part of the sex in the Chiaia; and Plautina's among the women more advanced in years. Very little suffices to

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clothe the lazaro, except on holidays, and then he is indeed tawdrily decked out, with laced jacket and flame-coloured stockings; his buckles are of enormous magni

tude, and seem to be the prototype of those with which our present men of mode load their insteps."

A curious anecdote is related respecting the queue, which, at the revolution in Naples, in the year 1799, was a most important addition to the heads of the gentlemen, inasmuch as, in many cases, it actually saved the heads it served to ornament. The royalists seized all those whom they suspected of being inimical to their party; but instead of questioning their captives, they adopted a novel and summary way of discovering their political sentiments-they merely looked whether ther heads gloried in queues or not. If they possessed this appendage, which was considered as strictly loyal, they were instantly liberated; but woe to those whose love of French modes had persuaded them to drop their pigtails! Words, entreaties, prayers,