wooden shoes, black stockings, and full scarlet petticoats of the
coarsest woollen, pockets of some different die attached to the outside,
and not uncommonly the appendage of a key or corkscrew: occasionally too
the color of their costume is still farther diversified by a chequered
handkerchief and white apron. The young are generally pretty; the old,
tanned and ugly; and the transition from youth to age seems
instantaneous: labor and poverty have destroyed every intermediate
gradation; but, whether young or old, they have all the same
good-humored look, and appear generally industrious, though almost
incessantly talking. Even on Sundays or feast-days, bonnets are seldom
to be seen, but round their necks are suspended large silver or gilt
ornaments, usually crosses, while long gold ear-rings drop from either
side of their head, and their shoes frequently glitter with paste
buckles of an enormous size. Such is the present costume of the females
at Dieppe, and throughout the whole Pays de Caux; and in this
description, the lover of antiquarian research will easily trace a
resemblance to the attire of the women of England, in the XVth and XVIth
centuries. As to the cap, which the Cauchoise wears when she appears _en
grand costume_, its very prototype is to be found in _Strutt's Ancient
Dresses_. Decorated with silver before, and with lace streaming behind,
it towers on the head of the stiff-necked complacent wearer, whose locks
appear beneath, arrayed with statuary precision. Nor is its antiquity
solely confined to its form and fashion; for, descending from the great
grandmother to the great grand-daughter, it remains as an heir-loom in
the family from generation unto generation. In my former visit to
Normandy, three years ago, we first saw this head-dress at the theatre
at Rouen, and my companion was so struck with it that he made the
sketch, of which I send you a copy. The costume of the females of
somewhat higher rank is very becoming: they wear muslin caps, opening in
front to shew their graceful ringlets, colored gowns, scarlet