heels and rattling sabres would scarcely have
been possible. They were not the boots we
envied, for we knew—what all the world
have since found out—that we were not a
military nation. Let such boots be worn by
our foes, men formed by nature as well as
art for trampling and kicking ; we mild and
helpless, as our representative rulers have
made us, are content to lie in the mud to be
trodden upon and spurned. Like Mawworm,
we like it. Such indignities are best suited
to our national capacities, unless indeed we
are labouring beneath the weight of a hideous
nightmare ! But, politics apart, the jack-boot
has not an indigenous character in England,
though huntsmen have re-introduced it at
the cover-side. I am, for my own part, more
familiar with its appearance in shop-windows
and pictured advertisements, than in the
haunts of the sportsman. I have, it is true,
when at Brighton, been lost in wonder at
the high-booted gents who turn out on Mr.
Roberta's horses, to join a meet—which is
not invariably a find—at the Devil's Dyke or
Newtimber Gate ; but my admiration has
chiefly been reserved for the works of art of
which Mr. Medwin, of Regent Street, makes
so splendid an exhibition. There the jack-boot
may be seen in all its glory, on limbs
which a good many of us, very likely, would
be proud to call ours. But a true and particular
account of the jack-boot can only be
given by one of our Crimean heroes, for they,
at last, have had the privilege of testing its
utility.

The boots I have spoken of, however
ambitious their pretensions, still fall very far
short of the Wellington in public estimation.
The Hessian and the Top had their day, but
—except for special purposes—it was only for
a day ; while the Imperial Jack was always
caviare to the million. But the Wellington
took root at once. Like the man whose name
it bears, it fixed itself firmly as one of the
institutions of the country. Old-fashioned
folks objected, at first, to what they considered
the anomaly of wearing leather under cloth
—of making the trowser protect the boot ;
but this crotchet soon vanished, for, as the
poet says,

Thus a new set of Darbies, when first they are worn,
   Makes the gaol-bird uneasy, though splendid their
     ray ;
But the links will grow lighter the longer they're
     borne,
  And the comfort increase as the shine fades away.

Besides, the Wellingtons had this immense
advantage over all other previously established
boots. No matter how unproducible the leg,
its want of symmetry was entirely hidden
beneath the sheltering trowser, which, like
charity, covered a multitude of—defects.
Some few—a very small minority, I take it—
might exclaim against this protection, and
clamour for free trade in the matter of legs ;
but these were quite at liberty to follow their
own devices, on which account the memory
of Romeo Coates, amongst others, is stiil
"green in our souls." The majority cleaved
to the Wellington—if I may be allowed the
expression—like wax ; and the Wellington
returned the compliment. When a benefit
becomes universal we cease—such is the
ingratitude of our nature—to make any account
of it. The sun that shines every day—
somewhere, if not in England ; the sleep that
comes every night—to most of us, if not to
all—we look upon as things that are ours by
indefeasible right ; and this profound and
novel remark holds good of Wellington boots.
Whether we paid for them, as in our palmy
days, the sum of three pounds five in Bondstreet,
or in more economical and wiser
moments, only one pound one in Cranbourne
Alley, the fact that we were dealing with a
simple necessity alone occupied us. Not a
syllable of gratitude was breathed in honour
of the illustrious inventor of the boots that
rendered us such "yeoman's service." Nay,
a spirit of baseness—I can call it nothing
else—has gradually crept over the public
mind, whereby it has been sought to supplant
the fame of the immortal Wellington. This
has shown itself in all sorts of mean
contrivances—in the clumsy Blucher, the
clumsier Ankle Jack, or Highlow, the skimping
half-faced sacerdotal Oxford, and in that
miserable substitute for an honest boot, the
pert Bottine, half cloth, half buttons—neither
leather nor prunella—anything but what it
ought to be.

I have painted the bright side of the picture;
but the tapestry has, alas ! its reverse. Boots
are the ne plus ultra, the Hercules' Pillars of
civilisation, and civilisation, I am sorry to
say is, in this instance, only another word for
corns. As the old song says, every white
must have its black, and every sweet its sour.
And again, Strife comes with manhood as
waking with day ; and a most unhappy day it
is when he, the proudly-booted one, awakes
to the consciousness of being the victim of
corns. I am afraid it would be vain to deny
that corns are a natural consequence of boots.
The Greeks, who wore sandals, never suffered
from corns, for they have left no word in their
language to express what they mean. The
Persians do not seem to have been so fortunate,
their vocabulary being full of the most
expressive terms significant of this calamity.
Some of these, however, are at variance
with others, one of the natural consequences of
a language which allows of one word meaning
several different things. Thus, a corn, in
Persian may be called either nãmwar, charm,
or sakht. The first of these implies something
more dignified than we are in the habit
of ascribing to corns, the literal interpretation
of nãmwar being, having a name,
celebrated, renowned. These are epithets which
might very well apply to a skilful
chiropodist ; but although the thing itself has a
name, and one only too well known, it is