from one of the profession, which taught me the impropriety of using such insulting names. A schoolfellow and myself were desirous of procuring some of the wax used in the trade, for the purpose, I regret to say, of placing it upon the chair of an obnoxious usher; and we applied to an old man, whose stall was situated in a cellar in the main street of the town, for cobblers' wax. He looked hard at us over his spectacles, and then resuming his work, replied: "I have not got any."

"Not got any cobblers' wax!"

'No, never heard of it. What is it like ?" 'Conscience suggested that he penetrated our motive for wanting it, and we were sneaking shamefacedly off, when the old man called after us, as if a thought had just struck him: "Oh, perhaps it is shoemakers' wax you want?"

'When we answered in the affirmative, he gave us a bit, and coals of fire!-would take no payment. In truth, the maker of shoes is not, for the most part, a cobbler; his repairs, on the contrary, are, in the majority of instances, neatly as well as strongly executed. Any one who is fond of fly-fishing will bear me out in the assertion, that in a village where there is no watchmaker, the shoemaker will be invariably found the best adviser and fly-tier, and the most intelligent guide to unknown streams. The shoemaker and the watchmaker are always the most intellectual men in their respective hamlets; and yet, while the latter is revered and respected, the former is called "cobbler" and "snob." Snob! I never knew a mender of shoes in my life who deserved that name: they are the most modest, unassuming race of men in the world; though I must own that the way in which one of them resented the insult once, must have been rather ludicrous in the eyes of thoughtless bystanders.

Being afflicted, as men of genius often are, with irritable nerves, he was nearly driven mad by a mischievous urchin, who, whenever he passed the stall, put his head in at the window, uttered a cry composed of a whistle and a word, like “Whe-wit snob!" and ran off. The enraged shoemaker rushed out. "If I could catch that fellow who said [stopping to whistle] 'Whe-wit snob!' I'd whe-wit snob' him, till he had not a whe-wit-snob bone in his whe-wit-snob body."

If you fancy the man foaming with rage, and stopping to whistle whenever he came to the objectionable epithet, you may catch a faint glimpse of the effect.

"The undeserved contumely which has been heaped upon the shoemaker has oppressed his spirit, and he does not often rise to a sense of the position which of right he should hold in the artistic world. I have read or heard somewhere, however, of a real artist who regarded his handiwork in a true Ruskinian spirit. A gentleman, who was rather curious in such matters, had been attracted by a tiny and beautifully executed boot which was exhibited in the man's shopwindow a fairy bootikin that would have been too small for Cinderella herself, exquisitely finished, and protected by a glass case. The gentleman entered the shop, and asked the price of this chef-d'œuvre. It was not for sale. A high figure was mentioned; but the shoemaker stood firm; nothing should induce him to part with it. "Well, then," persisted the curiosity collector, "will you make me another like it?" "Impossible, sir,” replied the artist. "That boot was never made. I struck it off in a moment of inspiration!"

Bootmakers like this, however, are rare; they are mostly a depressed and diffident race, conservative, bound down with red tape, and content to adhere closely to the patterns of their forefathers. "The cobbler should stick to his last," is a withering proverb which seems to have blighted all their energies, and any suggestion with respect to the improvement of

that last must come externally, from the customer; and so it happens that the revolution which is about to burst upon our feet has been inaugurated by a learned anatomist, who has nothing whatever to do with the reduction of his theory to practice. This little sixpenny pamphlet is the work of Doctor Hermann Meyer, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Zurich; it has been translated into English by John Stirling Craig, F.R.C.P.E., F.R.C.S.E.-a man of letters, you perceive-and it is entitled Why the Shoe Pinches.

'Now, I will defy you, or any other unprejudiced man who is not eaten up with vanity, to read this pamphlet through, with his bare feet and a pair of his boots before him, without seeing the justice of the remarks made in it. Here have we been abusing and quizzing the Chinese for compressing the feet of their female children, while we ourselves have been guilty of far greater absurdity; for they only lame those who are forbidden by the custom of the country to walk, while we do all we can to cramp the feet of our pedestrians, sportsmen, Alpine climbers, and soldiers. Indeed, with us the ladies have the best of it, for "men's boots being stronger, are less liable to distortion, and their feet more so; while ladies' feet suffer less, and their shoes more, than those of the other sex.'

'Have you corns? Does a painful experience at once suggest to you the answer to that riddle, "What best describes and most retards a pilgrim's progress?" Do the nails of your great toes grow into the flesh? I myself am happily free from this last great evil, nor am I afflicted with a bunion; but to corns, both hard and soft, I have been a martyr, and you must therefore pardon my enthusiasm.

'Let me read you an extract or two. "It is quite clear that the foot must get inside the shoe, and if the shoe differ in shape from the foot, it is no less plain that the foot, being the more pliable, must of necessity adapt itself to the shape of the shoe. If, then, Fashion prescribes an arbitrary form of shoe, she goes far beyond her province, and in reality arrogates to herself the right of determining the shape of the foot.” I have a considerable respect for Fashion, as you know, but I'll see her burned in a bonfire composed of all the back numbers of the Follet, before she shall determine the shape of my foot. "The shoe ought to protect the foot, but it has no business to distort its shape." Of course, it hasn't.

'Do you know how poor old Thomson of "the Senior," the Waterloo man, got lamed for life? He was hurried away from that famous Brussels ball, and had to join his regiment without changing his boots, which were new ones. He had to march in them, to sleep in them, to fight in them, and they injured the bones of his feet in a way which made him a cripple. The French shot which spared him, decimated his regiment; several of his seniors were killed, and he would have got his step, had he been able to take it. Is it not a provoking thing to think of? Here was a fine fellow cut short in his career, and condemned to life-long inactivity, because his boots were made for an imaginary, and not a human foot.

"The great toe plays by far the most important part in walking, because, when the foot is raised from the ground with the intention of throwing it forwards, we first raise the heel, then rest for an instant on the great toe, and in lifting this from the ground, the point of it receives a pressure which impels the body forwards. Thus, in raising the foot, the whole of the sole is gradually, as it were, unrolled up to the point of the great toe, which, again, receives an impetus by contact with the ground. The great toe ought, therefore, to have such a position as will admit of its being unrolled in the manner described; that is to say, it must so lie that the line of its axis, when carried backwards, will emerge at the centre of the heel. The smaller toes, however, are by no means without their

uses. In standing, they rest on the ground, and give lateral support to the foot; while, in walking, they are bent in a peculiar manner, so that they are firmly pressed against the ground; and here, too, they support the foot laterally. The first joint is strongly bent upwards, while the second is hollow above. This peculiar curvature enables the toes, in a measure, to lay hold of the ground as with birds' claws."

Now, look at your boot. Can your great toe so lie in it that the axis, when carried backwards, will emerge at the centre of the hecl? Not a bit of it. The sole is so shaped that both sides go tapering to a point like the prow of a boat, while only the outside of the foot slopes off at all. The consequence is, that the great toe is jammed outwards towards the other toes; and a line drawn from the point of it to the centre of the heel, would not pass through the ball of the toe and foot, as it should, but along the centre of the sole. Thus, when you walk, the great toe cannot "unroll" itself, as Dr Meyer expresses it, but is pressed in its efforts to do so against the side of the shoe; while the little toes are squeezed up together, often one on the top of another, like a litter of puppies; and this state of things is the cause of all the ills that pedal flesh is heir to. Heir to? Ay, future generations will suffer for this unnatural compressment of the feet. I myself, who address you, was born with a corn! Is it not provoking to think that we have been all these years lamenting and grumbling over the discomfort of our boots, clinging as long as possible to the old ones, which from constant wear had given way somewhat to the struggles of the foot to assume its proper position, and having those shoes which we required for strong walking exercise made as awkward and splay as possible, that so the foot might have room to do what it liked inside them, and yet it never occurred to any one to have his soles cut to follow the outline of his foot? We laugh at the political system which puts the square men in the round holes, and the round men in the square. Is it not almost incredible that we should continue to act thus practically, not metaphorically, and in spite of the physical pain we suffer?

'And the remedy for all this is so simple that it must soon become universal. Dr Meyer shews how a proper sole may be designed for the foot; and I will defy any one to glance at the diagram without wondering how it was nobody ever thought of it before, a feeling which I believe is never produced spontaneously in the human mind but when truth is expounded by genius.

Here are all the scientific directions, which, read with the plates before you, will make the whole matter as clear as day; but the gist of the thing, as far as I can explain it, is this: instead of being sloped away, the inner edge of the sole should be carried straight to the end of the great toe.

Put your feet close together, side by side; your heels, you see, touch; then there is a hollow, and then the sides meet again. So far it is all right, but they slope apart from one another again directly, and that is the mistake: they ought to remain in contact all the way along.'

But,' I objected, 'when I place my bare feet side by side, in the way you mention, with the heels in contact, the inner margins are not brought quite close together.'

6

That is because you are deformed,' replied Tollemache. Wear proper boots, and your feet will soon recover their natural position. Why, the nail of your great toe is at this moment in somewhere about the spot where your third toe ought to be, where it would be, if Nature, Meyer, and Craig had their way.'

'But surely shoes made in this manner would be very broad and clumsy.'

'Not necessarily broader than at present, only all the pointing must be effected from the outer side,

'Yes,' said he, 'I have (charitably?) made a Lancashire parcel of all my old-fashioned shoes; and if ever I put myself voluntarily to the torture of the Boot again, may I be married to the Scavenger's Daughter. But, here I have not half explained the thing to you; put the pamphlet in your pocket, and read it at your leisure: and, mark my words, in five years' time, every statue and bust of Sir Robert Peel in this country will be flanked by one of Dr Meyer, the second repealer of the Corn Laws.' With a laugh at what I thought the extravagant enthusiasm of my friend, I pocketed the little pink book; and, upon my word, I should not wonder if his prophecy was fulfilled; for I have read the pamphlet, and am pretty confident that any one who will do the same will join me in wishing good-luck to Messrs Meyer and Craig, and may they succeed in their endeavour to place society on a better footing.

MY EASTER HOLIDAY.

I HAVE not as yet reached the period of middle life, according to the common reckoning, but I have been a Fellow of my college-engaged in what is humorously termed the active duties of tuition'-for nearly a dozen years; and that species of existence is apt to prematurely age a man. Early Port, the exclusive study of the Greek Particles, and nine Chapels a week, take the youth out of one's constitution. Moreover, the attentions of females, which restore juvenescence, I am told, as bears' grease arrests baldness, and bids the lessening locks once more to cluster hyacinthine on the manly brow, have been always wanting to put the drag on to my revolving years. However attractive I may have personally been to the fair sex, they have not been so carried away by their affections as to forget that if I married I should lose my Fellowship, and therewith a considerable portion of my income. While the Royal Commission upon the universities was in session, and the proposition was mooted, that persons in my position should be permitted to wive, there was a marked improvement in the behaviour of the gentler portion of the human race towards myself; but upon the point being decided in favour of celibacy, there was an immediate relapse. Even the impulsively tenderthe class which I believe is termed 'the gushing'turned off the tap of their sensibilities with a promptitude scarcely to be expected from persons of such an unworldly character; they froze, I say, in four-andtwenty hours, or less, like pipes from the New River Company in a winter's night, only without the least danger of bursting-that is, of breaking their hearts. From that date, I say, I was regarded by matrons with marriageable daughters not only as ineligible, but as one belonging to the most dangerous classes, from whom nothing but aimless flirtation could be expected; while even if the daughters did do a little with me in that way, it was only when there was nobody else to be got. I have had fair fingers resting with apparent trustfulness within my own, snatched remorselessly away, and transferred to the custody of a sabaltern in a marching-regiment; I have given very expensive dinners in my college-rooms to young ladies, whose mothers sat by their side, all smiles for me, and yet who knew that those girls were going out on the 20th of the succeeding month to Calcutta, with their trousseaux in their travelling-trunks.

PRICE 14d.

As time went on, even these thin veils of hypocrisy were dispensed with, and the most favourably disposed of fair ones have long considered me in the light of a benevolent uncle, prohibited by the tables of consanguinity from becoming their husband, but from whom the most expensive presents could be accepted without obligation or impropriety. For my own part, I have gradually acquiesced in this state of things. When I am not what is technically called the Father of my college, a periodical office which I sometimes fill, and which would make Hebe consider herself a dowager, I feel as if I really were a sort of universal uncle. I need not say that I am godfather to a considerable portion of the rising generation, that monthly nurses hail my advent, and that my silversmith's bill for mugs alone is something considerable. Is it to be wondered at, therefore, that I am precociously respectable, immaturely square-toed-the very reverse of Falstaff, with the exception of wit, in which (if I may write it with modesty) I believe I am not deficient. It is not indeed wit of that rude nature which, imported from town by briefless barristers at Christmas, not seldom sets the tables of our combination-rooms in an unseemly roar; but for turning a neat epigram in the Latin language, I acknowledge no superior. Such are not indeed matters of impromptu; on the contrary, weeks elapse before the precious stone of thought is converted into the jewel-but then, what perfection! what flawless coruscation! My infallible test for all literature, and especially for your unintelligible modern English poetry, is this, can I-Eusebius Grayboy-turn it into Latin verse, or can I not? If I can't, it's rubbish. If I can't understand it, nobody can understand it. Don't talk to me about its suggestiveness. Nobody wants anything of that sort, but the Radicals. The royal foundation to which I have the honour to belong has existed, ay, and flourished, too (as our bursar will tell you), for more than three hundred years, and nobody has heard, I believe, of its having ever suggested anything yet. If I seem over-warm upon this matter, forgive me. I am the best-tempered man in the world, except upon three subjects: Suggestive Poetry, the College Port, and the power of discrimination just alluded to inherent in the Latin verse of my own composition. Touch me on any of those sacred points, and I am a maniac slinging flame.' any other things, I defy Mr John Bright himself to

About

ruffle me.
I am a clergyman, it is true; we who are
in residence at St Boniface are all obliged to be so;
but I am no bigot. When the barristers already
alluded to, whose fellowships have expired, but who
come down to see their old friends every Christmas-
tide, rally us good-naturedly about our monastic
habits (which, I must confess, are the reverse of
ascetic), I enjoy the joke without wincing. When
they call me a Thirty-niner, with reference to those
Articles which I have very willingly subscribed, I
merely smile, and arrange my white cravat. I am afraid
I like those lively, high-spirited, affectionate young
men, who, although of my own standing, are almost
like freshmen compared with myself. I don't mind
their slapping me on my back, so long as no under-
graduate sees them do it, and calling me a jolly old boy.
I am an old boy, and I flatter myself that I am a jolly
one. During that week of Christmas festivities, I seem
to renew my youth, although, after our guests have
departed, I suffer from the effects of the late hours,
the suppers, and the Silky-a most seductive but
pernicious drink. When I last parted from them at
our railway station, with that long lingering grasp of
the hand, beyond which the eloquence of British
friendship can no further go, one said: 'Now, remem-
ber, Grayboy, you have promised to come with us
at Easter to meet the summer in the Isle of Wight.
"Come when no graver cares employ . . . .

You'll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine,
And only hear the magpie gossip
Garrulous under a roof of pine."

I was delighted with the quotation, for the laureate's welcome to the Isle of Weight is one of the prettiest things you can imagine, when turned into Latin; but I had only the dimmest recollection of the promise to which my friend alluded. Still, I couldn't well say (for there were undergraduates on the platform) that covenants after Silky were not binding, so I nodded cheerfully, as if to say: You may rely on me; I'll be there. Still, I was by no means prepared for such a letter as the following, received most appropriately

upon the ensuing April 1st:

DEAR SEBEY [a most irreverent abbreviation for Eusebius]-We start on Thursday by 11.30 from Waterloo. We have secured a carriage, but be sure not to be late, as your presence is indispensable. You are our sixth man, and complete the table. [This is a phrase which I have since learned has reference to the game of whist.] The Q. C. is sure to bring cards, so you need not trouble yourself [!]. That four-cornered college-cap of yours might be convenient to deal upon, if the hint be not sacrilegious; but I think you had better leave your white choker at home, lest the stiffening should be taken out of it. Remember, you have promised.-Ever

yours,

CHRISTOPHER LITART.'

The tone of this epistle was by no means assuring to a person of my character; it was suggestive of disrespectability in a very high degree, and could not easily be rendered into hexameters. What holidays I had hitherto taken, had always been in the Long Vacation, and I had spent them in a professional manner, at Rome, at Athens, and among the ruins of Carthage. Upon my return from each of those interesting spots, I had given to the learned world the result of my observations in quarto; and a very pretty sum they had cost me. But what advantage should I be able to confer upon my fellow-creatures by a visit to Vect or Vectis?-for it is doubtful by what name the Romans called the Wect, or With, or Wict of Domesday-Book. To revive the theory of its being the Ictis mentioned as the mart for the export

* Non mordax aderit lingua cubantibus,
Sed sermo modicus vinaque mollia,
Dum te pica loquax murmure garrulo
Mulcet sub trabe pineâ.

ation of tin to Gaul, would be to arouse a hornet's nest of antiquaries. In what unfit company, too, was I going for the settlement of such weighty questions. Was Christy Litart the sort of man to share an interest in the ancient Belgæ? Would Shortand, who, I believe, writes for Punch, when he is not drawing settlements, permit of my calling Carisbrooke by its proper name, Whitgarasburg, as given to it by Stuf, the nephew of Cerdic the Saxon? No; he would call it Stuf-and-nonsense. Would not the Q. C. (so-termed) treat with ridicule the zeal of the pious Ceadwalla, who, we are told, 'set upon the Ile of Wight (in 686), and well neere destroied all the inhabitants, having bound himself by a vow to give a fourth part of it to the Lord, and thus brought it to the true faith last of all other the parties of this owre Britain.' Moreover, was there no impropriety in taking a holiday so early in the year at all? An Easter trip, however short, seemed to me like spending one's income in advance; or like those forty winks one sometimes indulges in before dinner, and pays for so exorbitantly at night. Still, as Litart said, I had promised; and Eusebius Grayboy is a man of his word. I omit any description of our travel by the Southwestern Railway; let it suffice to say that we seemed to get over the ground uncommonly fast, and saw very little of the country. On that short, but often decisive sea-passage to the Island, I was not ill, and that is all I can say. If the Ryde pier had been twenty yards shorter, I don't think I could have said as much. There I had prepared a surprise for my friends, and a triumph for myself. In the expectaaccommodation, I had written, under advice, to one tion of a crowded train and insufficient carriageMr Weal (an aboriginal fly-proprietor) to bespeak a vehicle to take the whole party on to Ventnor. But at the end of the pier we were worried by wild flydrivers just as badly as though I had taken no precautions whatever. No bespoken vehicle appeared, and we were assured that no Mr Weal was even in existence. On the mainland, said they, such a man might be, and even let out wheeled conveyances, but on that island there was certainly no such person. Shortand, whom, as having the judicial faculty much In this they all agreed, and made affidavits before developed, we appointed to administer the same. But no sooner had we covenanted with one of their body, than all the rest went and informed Mr Weal, who presently drove up with a private omnibus, and an air of precise punctuality.

The ride outside to Ventnor, 'twixt the sea and the fenceless down, may be described in some future illustrated edition of this paper, but cannot be depicted by words. Here we were shut in by banks of primroses, with a sky to roof us borrowed from Italy; and here the hoary Channel tumbled a breaker on chalk and sand immediately beneath us; now we rolled through a fairy village, every cottage of which was ornée, and its garden bright with flowers that would scarce be seen elsewhere for months to come; and here the scene suddenly changed to the rifted chasms and wild disorder of the Undercliff, and the strong sweet scent of the wall-flowers was overwhelmed with the Smell of the Sea. Ah, delicious, invigorating fragrance, ah, mysterious odour, let me sniff thee once again. What matter if thou art, as some will have it, but the offspring of marine decay; to me thou art a sacred incense, redolent of youth and joy, and the irrevocable Past. Thy sudden perfume bears with it a score of happy memories; a gallery of pleasant pictures opens before my inward eye; in my ear whisper dear tones which I shall never more hear in this world, and I am a child once more by the side of the unchangeful sea. Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean-tears from the depth of some divine despair, rise in the heart and gather to the eyes, whenever this odour greets me, and even Latin verse refuses to perform its critical function.