admire their children's legs; they recommend
them passionately as objects for care and
prudence to the child-nurses who carry the
babies. It is only among this strongly feeling
class, and not among the apathetic rich, that
I have heard such a term applied to a child's
extremities as " his blessed legs."

Consider of what huge importance
legs are to high as well as low. Lord
Viscount Protocol sitting down on the
Treasury Bench, is but a mean little man
with a broad-rimmed hat pulled over his
eyes ; but, " on his legs," he is Cicero in
eloquence, Demosthenes in delivery, Grattan
in force of invective. The due management
of the legs is the soul of military discipline :
an army that did not keep step would be
beaten by a Calmuck corporal. Legs carry
the hod up ladders, with the mortar that
cements the stones of our Victoria Tower.
The agile use of our legs will remove us from
within the deadly presence of the officer of
the Sheriff of Middlesex, munished with a
warrant for our arrest, and will convey us
swiftly out of his bailiwick—a process of
evasion denominated "leg bail."

The leg is the most honoured part of the
body. It opens the ball with queens ; its
foot treads the carpet of thrones ; without it
Edward the Third could never have
instituted the most honourable order of the
garter. Do you think the Pope's Legate
is so called because he is legatus sent ?
No ! it is because of his legs clothed in his
cardinal's red stockings. What would Louis
the Fourteenth have been without the
padding on his legs and the high heels to his
shoes ? He would have been le petit Monarque.
What would monumental brasses and
Templars' tombs be without the crossed
legs of the knights and barons ? Could our
coats, our vests, our continuations, have been
fashioned in all ages without the cross-legged
tailors ? The gravity of the Turk, the wisdom
of his beard, the splendour of his yataghan,
the perfume of his chibouk and the aroma of
his coffee, would be as naught without his
papouche-feeted legs folded under him on the
cushioned divan.

Passing from honour to dishonour, we
must not forget that to punish a man's legs
and feet is the most dreadful infliction short
of death in the East ; and to know the true
value of legs you should be some miserable
bastinadoed Turkish or Egyptian wretch
crawling on your stomach from the court of
justice, where the Cadi has just ordered you
five hundred blows of the bastinado on your
feet. The human legs have it in their power
to confer the most grievous insult to human
honour that is known. The hand can slap,
the arm can strike, the head can butt, but it is
the leg that directs the foot to confer the
deadly kick ; and it is a retributory leg and
foot that steps out the twelve paces when the
kick is washed out in blood. The legs have
it in their power to conduct us to the top-
most rounds of Ambition's ladder; to carry
us, at the head of the forlorn hope, into the
crumbling smoking breach; with our legs we
trample on the carcasses of our enemies; and
scamper over obstacles, and run that race of
fortune which for all our legs is not always to
the swift; with our huge legs we " bestride
the narrow world like a Colossus," and make
petty men creep under them.

But, O! our legs often play us sorry
tricks. Bad legs, wicked untrustworthy
legs, they lead us to sorrow and
shame, and danger and death. Ensign
Whitefellow would have been as brave a
young officer as ever waved a pair of colours,
but for those pusillanimous legs of his, which
ran away with him so shamefully at the siege
of Ticonderago. It was Private Swabbins's
knavish legs that caused him to abscond from
barracks with his regimental necessaries ; it
was those same legs that took him to a
marine-store shop in Back-lane, Chatham,
where he sold said necessaries; and what
but his legs enticed him to the beer-shop,
where he spent his ill-gotten earnings ? It
was his legs that brought him to be
tried by court-martial, and that conducted
him to the military prison at Fortclarence.
Those that have sinned by their legs
suffer by the legs; as the shameful stocks,
and the galleries of the French bagnes, and
the manacled convicts of our dockyards, and
the leg-chained street-sweepers of the Italian
towns can testify. Those likewise, who
abuse their legs by running about to strange
ale-houses, and standing at gin-shop bars,
first get unsteady on their legs, and then their
legs slide away from under them, and forsake
them utterly, and they fall into the shame of
the gutter, and the ignominy of the mud.
Badly-disposed legs carry otherwise virtuously
minded men into gambling houses, broils and
contentions; they lead them in quarrels to
interpose, by which they oft-times get an
ensanguined nose; finally, dissipation must have
legs, else how would it enable its votaries to
"run through" their property, and "outrun
the constable?"

The times have been when the legs have
not been deemed unworthy of performing
sacerdotal functions. Many were the
choregraphic solemnities of the old temples of
Eleusis and Ephesus and Memphis. The
priests of Baal had sacerdotal orgies. The
witches in Macbeth danced. The Fakirs of
India leap, and the Dervishes of Stamboul
whirl on the tips of their toes; and there
are Hindoo fanatics who hope to go to
heaven by standing, flamingo-wise, upon one
leg.

How many and what magnificent fortunes
have been made by nothing but legs ? Clad
in pink tights, those extremities have
gathered millions of golden pieces from the
opera stage. Say, ye Anatoles, ye Vestrises,
ye Carlotta Grisis; ye Taglionis married to
Russian princes, ye Cerritos, ye Elsslers