place to place with a basket at their
backs, square to the shoulders and rounded
outwards. In this they carry their few pieces
of kit, knife, awls, &c., and a necessary
assortment of leather for patches and sole and
heel mending. On getting a job, these French
Crispins sit down at a door step, and work
away; then, packing up their traps again,
they are off in search of other customers,
calling out somewhat on the principle of our
itinerant tinkers and chair-menders. Most of
these men are said to come from Lorraine.
There is another class of cobblers in France,
partly itinerant and partly stationary: sometimes
you may see, in the South of France,
an enormous umbrella planted firmly in the
market-place, a cobbler busily engaged beneath
it, and a villager or two waiting while the work
is in progress—the unshod feet being meanwhile
innocently displayed to the light of day.

The cobbler is a favourite in many countries,
and is indeed a sort of privileged person.
He is a clubbist, beyond all doubt, and one
who gives forth his opinions concerning the
state of the nation with a good deal of self-
satisfaction. And even in the East, where
clubs are not very plentiful, and where men
do not much accustom themselves to discussions
on the state of the nation, we find nevertheless
that the shoe-makers, or slipper-makers, or
cobblers, are a waggish sort of people; they
take part in many a story, as the readers
of the Arabian Nights entertainments will
doubtless remember; if we mistake not, the
cobblers very often assisted the princesses to
make their escape.

What a delicate name is that of " Translator,"
as given by St. Crispin to some of his
sons!  A "vamper" is dubious; a "renovator"
will do very well; but a translator is
a happy stroke of genius. When boots and
shoes have rendered all the service which
the owners hope to draw out of them, they
find their way through—paths which mark
the curious diversities of town trade—to the
districts above-named, and others of similar
character, where the translators take them in
hand. Alas! a hero is not a hero to his
valet; nor is a translator a translator among
his brethren of the shoe-craft: he is only a
"clobberer." Now a clobberer is not a nice
name at all: the man who answers to this
name does not do nice work or use nice
materials. If there are crevices and breaks in
an old pair of shoes which he does not choose
to fill up witli leather, he insinuates into
them a dose of clobber, which seems to be a
mixture of ground cinders and paste; and if
there be other gaps which clobber will not
serve but heel-ball will, then does this black
compound do duty instead of leather. But if
neither clobber nor heel-ball will suffice; if
there be "nothing like leather" for the
purpose; he does not waste precious bits
of new leather; he has by him a store of
pieces, derived from the uppers and unders
of boots and shoes which have passed
through a process of dissection, after perhaps
a long career of service in a higher walk in
life. A pair of Wellingtons, trodden under
feet until their life is nearly pressed out of
them, are sold at last for sixpence or
eightpence; their day is so far gone that they
cannot even be translated; but they are still useful
to cut up, and to supply small pieces which
may be destined to run a yet further career.

While the old shoes and boots are being
cobbled and clobbered, the makers of new
goods are striving to introduce new and
useful forms and materials in the manufacture.
One man sews his boots with wire-thread
instead of hempen-thread; another
directs our attention to his revolving circular
heels, which may be turned round when worn
down on one side; a third points to his excellent
iron-rim heel, filled with gutta-percha;
a fourth seeks impermeability to wet by the
insertion of a gutta-percha sole between the
inner and the outer soles; a fifth, learned in
the elasticity of India-rubber, inserts elastic
side-pieces to his shoes. In the warlike days,
the late Sir M. I. Brunel made army shoes by
machinery, fastened with nails instead of by
sewing; it was ingenious, like his block
machinery; but, somehow or other, it died.

St. Crispin has had something to do with
the Government, and has found out (what has
been discovered by many others) that Government
officials move very slowly in Government
affairs.  A " Blue Book," of recent date,
narrates how that a certain shoemaker, at
Edinburgh, patented in 1838 a boot or half-
boot, which had an elastic " waist," the waist
being that portion of the bottom of the boot
situated between the tread and the heel; it
was made of an elastic material, that it might
better accommodate itself to the movements
of the foot. The patentee thought these boots
well suited for our infantry soldiers; and the
fourteen years' correspondence which ensued
is quite a curiosity. The Commander-in-
Chief, knowing that the colonels of regiments
have a pecuniary interest in the clothing of
the men, disavowed all control, but promised
to recommend the shoes to the colonels, if the
invention turned out well. The Adjutant-
General wrote to the general officer
commanding in Scotland with no result. A fire
of letters followed from the Adjutant-General
to the Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, from
the Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, back
again, to the Adjutant-General, which lasted
up to 1843, when the Adjutant-General
declared that he could do nothing further in
the matter. The patentee then wrote to the
duke, and a correspondence ensued backward
and forward, between exactly the same
parties, until 1847. The inventor then wrote
to the Secretary-at-War. who wrote to the
Adjutant- General, who wrote to the duke,
who wrote to the Clothing Board, who wrote
back to the Secretary-at-War, who wrote
back to the patentee, communicating no
satisfactory result. The matter finished nearly