from some commercially-minded shoemaker,
and the periodical recapitulation of the royal
and noble cures of a great corn-cutter and his
brother chiropodists, we might as well, for the
mental attention we bestow upon our legs
and feet, be so many Miss Biffins.

Fashion, even, that ubiquitous and
capricious visitant of the human form divine,
has looked coldly upon legs. While the shirt
of man within the last few years has undergone
as many improvements, annotations,
emendations, illustrations, and transformations
as the text of an Act of Parliament;
while the human shirt-collar has enjoyed a
perfect Ovidian series of metamorphoses;
while each succeeding season has brought
changes vast and radical into the constitution
of ladies' sleeves and men's wristbands;
while the collars of coats and the flounces of
dresses have continually changed their shapes
like the chimera, and their colours like the
cameleon; while the bonnet of beauty has
fallen from its cocked-up elevation on the
frontal bone to its accumbent position on the
dorsal vertebrae; while even that conservative
institution, the hat of man, has fluctuated
between the chimney-pot and the D'Orsay,
the wide-awake and the Jim-Crow, the
Guerilla and the Kossuth, and now seems to
lean somewhat towards the Turkish Fez;
while all these multifarious transitions of the
other parts of our garb have taken place, the
coverings of the leg and the foot have been
untangible to the attacks of time, and fashion,
and convenience. Shoe-strings have held
their own since the Birmingham buckle-
makers petitioned the Prince Regent against
their introduction. The British Blucher has
remained unchangeable for thirty-nine years;
the Wellington is the same boot that spurred
Copenhagen's sides o'er the field of Waterloo;
the tasselled Hessian, though it has seen
its coeval pig-tail sink into the limbo of
oblivion, is yet worshipped in secret by devout
votaries; abbreviated continuations of black
silk, kerseymere, plush, corduroy, cord and
leather, yet shine in the court, the diplomatic
service, the servants' hall, the hunting-
field, and the charity-school. Prejudice has
tried to banish shorts, and Invention to
improve upon stockings; the whole results of
centuries of trousers wearing (the ancient
Gauls wore them: see Bracchæ) have been in
the ridiculous items of straps and stripes down
the sides; and, apparently despairing of the
possibility of doing anything for legs in the
improvement line, fashion has left legs alone.
The world following, like an obedient
slave as it is, upon fashion's heels, has quite
neglected and forgotten legs. Philosophy
has turned the cold shoulder upon them; and
the dramatist has scouted them, and the
epic poet has disdained them. Legs have
fallen to the province of mountebanks,
tight-rope dancers, acrobats, and ballet girls.
From neglect they have even fallen into
opprobrium; and we cannot find a baser
term for a swindling gambler than to call
him a " Leg."

Yet only consider the immense importance
of legs! What should we be without them?
Ask that infinitely poor and miserable person,
a bedridden man. To be deprived of the
blessed faculty of locomotion at will—not
to possess that glorious privilege of riding
"Shanks's mare," or of taking the " Marrow-
bone stage;" of bidding defiance to stage
coaches, carriages, cabs and railway trains; of
feeling the firm earth beneath our tread; of
footing it over the daisies, or strolling over
the velvetty sward, or climbing the hill, or
descending the valley, or paddling through
the brook: to be unable to take a walk, in
fact, is to be deprived of nine tithes of our
pleasures here below, of half our capacity for
enjoyment, of nearly all our faculty of
observation. A man may learn with his legs very
nearly as much as he can with his eyes; and
he learns it more cheerfully, more genially,
more naturally. It was a true word spoken
in jest, that named the legs the understandings.
A great walker is nearly always a
contented, happy, and philosophically observant
man. The free use of his legs makes the penny
postman satisfied with his twenty-five
shillings a-week, reconciles the policeman to his
weary night watch, solaces the sentinel on
his guard; makes the ploughboy whistle as
he follows his team, the milkmaid balance
her pails merrily, and the pedlar carry his
pack as if it were a pleasure. Legs are a
consolation in trouble, and the grand remover
of spleen, care, and evil humours. The first
thing that a man does when he is
immured in jail is to walk about (if so he
be allowed) his prison yard. If you have
been angry with your brother, or if your
wife has vexed you, or your affairs are in
gloomy case, or your periodical hatred of the
world and those that are in it, come upon
you, you cannot do better than " walk it off."

In infancy what intense interest is
concentrated upon legs! We watch the first
endeavours to walk of a little child with
as much, if not more, interest and anxiety
than its first attempts to speak. We seem
to look upon articulation as upon one of
Nature's spontaneous good gifts which
will come in its own good time; but to
teach the child the use of its legs, and to
watch over the proper development of his
paces—from the shaky ill-balanced toddle to
the straight strong step—seem to require all
our energies and caution and attention.
Heavens! what tortures mothers must
endure, what heroic sacrifices they would
submit to, to avert the horrible possibility of
baby being bandy! However remiss science
and erudition may have been, the poorer
classes appreciate legs. They know of
what infinite service those extremities will
be to the child—how absolutely indispensable
they will one day become, in conjunction with
the hands as bread-winners. They fondle and