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Nothing can be more clumsy than the shoes of Harold and his attendants, as represented in the Bayeux tapestry; and there is no doubt that the common people continued to wear shoes of untanned leather-such as may be found in Kerry and other parts of Ireland at this daylong after the Norman conquest.

Froissart, in his inventory of the spoil taken by Edward the Third in his first expedition to Scotland, upon the retreat of the Scotch from Stanhope Forest, mentions, among a variety of other items, ten thousand shoes, or brogues, made of raw hide; and these brogues the Scotch kerues, like the Irish Rapparees, continued to wear, in lieu of more modern improvements, till comparatively recent times; nay, we doubt not that makers of them may still be found in the Highlands of Scotland as well as in the wilder

districts of Ireland.

With the Norman conquest came a revolution in the form and finish of the shoe, and we may almost presume the date of French fashions in England to have commenced with this epoch; certain it is that in the succeeding reign the first pointed ones made their appearance, and flourished in an extraordinary manner under the auspices of a great beau of the court of William Rufus, who obtained the sobriquet of Robert the Horned, from the long and sharp points appended to his shoes, and which were stuffed with tow, and twisted like a ram's horn. Whether there was any truth in the whisper, which attributed the innovation to a deformity of the inventor's foot (just as the ruff is said to have covered a wen, and the patch a pimple) we have no means of discovering; but the rumour remains en evidence. At any rate, fashion appears to have been just as obsequious to its leaders' follies then as now, and henceforth its Totaries made a point of turning up their toes to the acme of the ridiculous and unnatural. These shoes were called "pigacix," and the points occasionally described a scorpion's tail; the boots affected the same peculiarities, and were denominated ocrea rostrate; and both were inveighed against in very severe terms by the clergy of the period.

Long and pointed shoes without heels, and having a square opening over the instep, were Worn in the time of Henry the First; and in that of Henry the Second they began to be beautified with embroidery; for Matthew Paris, in describing the interment of this monarch, represents him arrayed in kingly robes, with golden crown upon his head, gloves on his hands, and his feet encased in boots wrought with gold.

King John appears to have indulged a more classic taste than his predecessors, for in an inventory of his dress nothing makes a finer show than his sandals of purple cloth fretted with gold; but these were probably reserved for state occasions.

Up to this period we find nothing said of coloured shoes; but at the marriage of Margaret, Henry the Third's daughter, with the king of

Scots, the nobility who attended the wedding wore shoes embroidered in chequers. Embroidered shces, according to "Herbé's Costumes Français," had indeed been used in France as early as the time of Charlemagne ; and it is curious that amongst all the variations of form and fashion to which our subject has succumbed, that this mode of ornamenting them is still in vogue; affording our sex an elegant employment in one of the most useful forms on which the mysteries of tent and cross stitch can be expended.

But

This style of decoration remained in great favour through the successive reigns of the Edwards; and under the auspices of the beautiful Queen Philippa and her magnificent lord, the buds and blossoms of needlework blazed with jewels, and whole patterns were sometimes wrought upon the shoe or boot in precious stones. Though the beaked shoe remained in the end of it the mode changed, as we may fashion in the early part of this reign, towards perceive by those represented on the tomb of Edward the Third, in Westminster, and on the effigy of the Black Prince at York. fashion soon veered back to the old form; and, as if in revenge for their previous curtailment, the points of the shoes shot out in the two succeeding reigns to a more than ever extravagant length, till in that of Richard the Second it became necessary to fasten them to the knees, to prevent their tripping up their wearers. Out of this grew the necessity of a new gande for luxury, in the shape of chains of gold or silver gilt, for the purpose of attaching them to the knees; laces were also used for this purpose; but as a law was subsequently passed, forbidding the wearing of them under forfeiture of twenty shillings, in consequence of their incumbering people in walking, we may imagine their effect on slovenly or shabby persons, and the result which must naturally have occurred from any derangement of these artificial extremities.

In Chaucer's time some of these shoes had the upper part cut in imitation of church-windows; Museum, we observed some (found on the and amongst the British antiquities in the Royal Thames banks) of the reigns of Edward the Fourth and Henry the Eighth, which were perforated very curiously, but of a totally different shape from those of the Plantagenet

era.

which not even an Act of Parliament could put The constancy of the English to their points, down, nor the declamations of the clergy render unpopular, was matched on the other side of the Channel by the extravagant whims indulged in by the beaux of the court of Charles the Fifth, who not only wore their shoes embroidered in colours and adorned with gold and pearls and precious stones, but they sometimes carried caprice so far as to appear with a boot on one foot and a shoe on the other, or with one white shoe and the other black.

Meantime sermons were preached, and satires written, with a view to the destruction of the Crackowses; for so were the pointed shoe of

L

In Catholic countries, St. Crispin has still his fête day, which was formerly kept in England, where the members of the guild walked in procession, and in some places were expected to perform a play at their own expense.

But to return to shoes themselves. Though
the varieties of points and gold chains had been
removed, the round-toed shoes of Henry the
Eighth's time were not less magnificently deco-
rated than those of their predecessors. Witness
the description of Cardinal Wolsey's, which
William Roy, the satirist, has left us-
"Besides this, to tell thee more news,
He hath a pair of costly shoes,

Which seldom touch any ground:
They are so goodly and curious,
All of gold and stones precious,
Costing many a thousand pound."

Richard the Second's time called; and it is not a little amusing to hear the vehemence with which some authors of the period inveighed against them. "Their shoes and pattens," remarks the writer of the "Elogium," are snouted and piked more than a finger long, crooking upwards, resembling devils' claws, and fastened to the knees with chains of gold and silver. Nor were the other denouncers of this ridiculous fashion less sincere in their disgust, or more polite in the expression of it. But the points held out, or rather lengthened out; for in the reign of Henry the Sixth we find then grown amazingly, and some of the bottines of that period have beaks so attenuated as to resemble the point of a needle. For three centuries did this preposterous mode exist, in spite of the "bulls of popes, the decrees of councils, and the declamations of the clergy." Even the act of Parliament which prohibited the use of boots or shoes with pikes exceeding two inches in length, and rendered shoemakers punishable if they infringed this rule, was perfectly insufficient to deter the manufacture or the wearing of them, till at length the point of the boot became a point of religion, and the awful sentence of excommunication was fulminated against all who wore them above the parliamentary length. The pain of cursing by the clergy, in those days of ignorance and super-its head quarters, under the auspices of François Nor was the fashion confined to England. In stition, carried terrors which the law had not; the First, we are told that they were "les souand instead of awakening comparisons between the cause and the curse, and forcing on men's liers dégagés très larges souvent même très minds the natural inferences that follow, the

on

most infatuated exquisite found himself at last reduced to the necessity of abjuring the literally long-contended point, and obliged to wear, compulsion," the regulation pike, or go without. Under these circumstances, it is no wonder that we find the shoes of the latter part of the reign of Edward the Fourth, only a few years subsequent to the putting forth of this threat, entirely devoid of this extraordinary ornament.

Sixty-six years previous to the suppression of this fantastic mode, the Cordwainers' Company had been incorporated in London (1410). It was so called from the shoemakers using Cordova leather (a goat-skin called Cordoban), the manufacture of which had been acquired from the Moors, and was excelled in by the inhabitants of that city. This was also (and from the same cause) the statute name of the shoemakers in France, who in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries formed a society, called "Frères Cordonniers," under the patronage of St. Crispin. The 25th of October still appears amongst the high tides in the calendar, as the anniversary of this saint, who, it is said, came with his brother Crispinian from Rome to Soissons, in France, for the purpose of preaching christianity, where, being desirous of preserving their independence, they worked at the craft of shoemaking, and hence are esteemed the patrons of the trade. They were beheaded about the year 308.

But even previous to this, the craft could boast of saintly members; for, according to Butler, St. Anianus, a contemporary of St. Mark, was also one of the fraternity.

WAT. And who did for these shoes pay?
JEFF. Truly, many a rich abbé,

To be eased of his visitation."

In the reign of Queen Mary we find the round toes spreading in a lateral direction to such an extent, that it became necessary to issue a proclamation to prevent the wearing of shoes more than six inches square at the toes!

carrés du bout."

English ladies, and in the curious old ballad of White shoes were at this period worn by "Greensleeves"-*the tune of which Shakspeare twice refers in his "Merry Wives of Windsor"- the slighted lover, enumerating the vari ous gifts with which he had sought to win the Lady Greensleeves' regards, mentions—

"Crimson stockings, all of silk, With gold all wrought above the knee, Thy pumps as white as was the milk, And yet thou wouldest not love me.' "GREENSLEEVES, &c."

Pumps were then light shoes, "with none or slipper which came into vogue during Elizavery low heels," and perhaps led the way to the beth's reign in 1570, and is frequently menbuckled and laced. tioned by Shakspeare, who also speaks of boots

veered round to the opposite extreme, and at the From shoes without heels, fashion presently court of Louis the Thirteenth of France we find coloured shoes worn, ornamented with great ears ("de grandes oreilles"), and elevated on heels four or five inches in height, red for court dress.

the reign of the luxurious grand monarque: they White shoes grew popular at Versailles during of blue or red ribbon, and were high-heeled as were ornamented with rosettes, or immense ties afterwards introduced at the court of St. James's, those of the preceding reign. These shoes were

* Published in "A Handful of Pleasant Delites," 1584.

and, a little modified, are the types of some intended for her Majesty's bal costumé, with a view of which Mr. Pattison, of Oxford-street, kindly favoured us. Even so late as 1751, in the reign of George the Second, this mode was retained by the gallants and courtiers; and Lord Chesterfield, in one of his clever, heartless letters to his son, in which he writes him a homily on the fashion of his clothes, remarks that at his age it was as ridiculous not to be very well dressed as at his own it would be to wear a white feather and red-heeled shoes.

From the decline of this fashion our subject loses all that was picturesque in its historysquare toes and buckles, the very antithesis of white kid, and cherry-coloured roses, and high red heels. Mark the next revolution, and henceforth-except the alternations from long to short quarters, high and low fronts, wood heels and no heels, with variations from half an inch to two inches in the width of the toe-there has

been no distinguishing character in the pedal

adornments of these latter days. Just now an effort is being made to add an inch to the feminine stature by the addition of what are called military heels, the effect of which has been long approved of in foot regiments. There is also a tendency to restore the roses of the Restoration on full dress shoes and undress slippers. Witness those worn by the President of the French at his late state ball, and their appearance at polkas and quadrille parties throughout the winter. Moreover, only Cinderella's slippers could be more exquisite than some we have just been shown, of the Duchess of S-th-rl-d's, in one pair of which the lilac's leaf and blossom make the fronts and backs, and are mingled in the rosette on the instep.

We hail all elaboration in these delicate helps to luxury, because they must necessarily employ additional hands in a business which even at present affords an important source of occupation to women, who, besides the binding and sewing of the lighter kinds of shoes, would have the task of trimming them also.

At one period, shoemaking was not confined to the Cordwainers' Company. Ladies, at the commencement of the present century, took lessons in the art, and worked at it--not, of course, after the primitive fashion of the regular practitioners, who, with very soiled shirt-sleeves rolled above the elbow, sit bent double on their low seats over last and lapstone-but with all the apparatus refined and beautified, and so conveniently arranged, that not even d'Egville's self could fear for the shoulders of the fair workwomen; all the requisites having a proper place assigned them at a work-table fitted up for the purpose, to which the block was attached by a machine contrived upon the principle of the

screw-cushion.

Mackay, of Clifford-street, Bond-street, was then famous for his five-guinea lessons, and the numbers of his aristocratic and fashionable pupils; and the celebrated Ralph still lives, who had the honour of initiating the royal fingers of

the Princess Charlotte into the mysteries of St. Crispin's craft.

Amateur shoemaking exists no longer; ladies are satisfied with ornamenting their shoes, without encroaching on the privilege of the manufacturers. And as kid and enamelled leather are as easily embroidered as satin or canvass, a great deal may be done to render shoes of these materials effective. Nothing can exceed the beautiful appearance of gold or silver threads on coloured, white, or bronzed leather, or would be more in keeping with the present almost oriental magnificence of evening dress.

The clicker would cut out the material, the

lady or her employé embroider it; it would then be handed to the binder to close and bind; then it would pass into the maker's hands to be soled; another hand would probably paste in the sock or lower lining; and another scrape, pipeclay, and finish off the sole to the smoothness and polish desired. The wages of a good told, £2 per week. In the season 2 10s. is shoemaker in a first-rate house averages, we are sometimes earned; but in the cheaper houses, where the work is slighter, and the materials low priced, the earnings are very considerably diminished. A well-made double-soled pair of ladies'-boots will take a man a day to make; with single soles and light work, he may, if he be a quick hand, make three pair. In the same way, the binding varies with the description of article, and the house for which the women work-full-priced houses pay fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen-pence per pair for boot-binding, the cheaper ones five-pence, while shoes fetch only half this money. Some women employed in the bespoke shoe-warehouses are enabled to make a guinea a-week at their business; medium hands workers not less than 8s. The sewing of the average from 10s. to 15s.; and the ordinary lighter shoes, and stitching of boots- after the leather has been "stabbed" (as it is technically called) with a little machine, which, being passed along like a paste-cutter, punctures the holes for the fine and close stitches, which adds so much to the strength and neatness of what are called goloshed boots, in which the front pieces are continued along some portion or the whole of the sides-is also the work of women; and thus where a man and his wife are industrious, and work together, a very comfortable and remunerating income can be made. But the great complaint of masters is the small dependence to be placed on the workmen.

Irregular habits may in a great measure accrue from their working at their own houses, instead of under the eye of a master, which necessarily has a great effect in producing habits of punctuality and good workmanship. We fear ladies'-shoes see the inside of many deplorable dwellings before they rest on silken ottomans, or press the piles of Aubuson and Axminster. There is one feature of shoemaking,

*For these particulars we are indebted to Mr. Pattison and Mr. Bird, of Oxford-street.

picturesque now from its very oddity, but which in bygone days was almost as common in our streets as in those of Rome during the reign of Domitian, when the emperor had them cleared away by proclamation-we mean the cobbler's-stalls, only a very few of which survive the dearth of repairs consequent on the moderate price of modern shoes.

We never pass that one at the corner of Store-street (shared, by the way, with a speculative tailor) without being reminded of the brother of Curran, who whenever John Philpot | refused to find subsidies for his inveterate course of extravagant dissipation, raised such a stall against the blank wall which fronted the councillor's house in London, and in the largest of all large letters informed the passers-by that "ladies' and gentlemen's repairs were neatly executed" by a Curran."

We remember to have seen one many years ago, under the shade of a green tree, on the upper part of Tower-hill, and to have heard (for even cobbler's-stalls have their tragedies) that on the occasion of Sir Francis Burdett's commitment to the Tower, when a riot was looked for amongst the thousands that thronged the hill, and some confusion was taken advantage of by the soldiery as a pretext for firing on the mob, that the then inmate of this humble tenement, innocent of all unlawful deeds, but that which cost Eve Eden, fell harmless as a dove falls beneath the shot of the fowler, the undeserving victim of violence and party feeling. But enough of our subject; we have brought our shoes to the cobbler's-stall somewhat prematurely, especially as those in which we have dealt are far too fine to have found their way naturally in that direction. We know that the Germans had their cobbler-bard, and that Alphenus, the after Roman Consul, before he pleaded in courts, worked humbly in his stall; but we have no dignities wherewith to gild this portion of our jottings.

THE ANGEL OF THE HOME.

BY CHARLES H. HITCHINGS.

"There is not an angel added to the host of heaven but does its blessed work on earth in those that loved it here." DICKENS'S Old Curiosity Shop.-Chap. 54.

There comes an angel, day by day,
Into this home of ours;
And if we chance abroad to stray,
'Tis there among the flowers:
Its low, sad, gentle voice is heard
By night about our bed,
In many a dear, familiar word,
That 'minds us of the dead.
It brightens all our happiness,
And, when dark sorrows come,
Speaks comfort to our hearts, and is
The Angel of our Home.

When first we learned to speak of Death, We felt it at our side; While, blessing us with parting breath, Our own sweet mother died. It stayed our unavailing tears,

And kissed our pale cheeks dryBrought hope, to soothe our faithless fears, And pointed towards the sky; Since when, in all our happiness,

And when dark sorrows come, 'Tis ever by our side, and is

The Angel of our Home.

And all our love, so great before,

Since that sad hour hath grownOur angel bids us love the more, The more we feel alone;

It will not suffer in our mind
One selfish thought to stay-
One envious wish, or word unkind,
Since our bereavement-day.
Oh may it bear us company

In all our years to come!--
Sit ever in our hearts, and be
The Angel of our Home!

SUNSHINE.

BY MARIA NORRIS.

Courage, faint heart! Why all these fears
And questions for the morrow?
Wipe, wipe away these bitter tears,

Mute signs of useless sorrow!
God's planets shine behind the mist,
So beam thy faith unclouded—
Like mountain-tops by daylight kist
Though all their base be shrouded.

One Hand holds up the stars that roll,
And girdles in the ocean;
His love is shed on every soul
To which he gave emotion.
Oh not one slightest woe befalls
But he gives strength to bear it;
Can He be deaf to Sorrow's calls
Who came on earth to share it?

Look up, my brother! God is good,
And cares for human grieving;

His discipline is spirit-food

To strengthen thy believing.

Look up! Tread under feet the earth-
Keep free a soaring spirit;
Clay only gave thy body birth
That soul may all inherit!

Faith, Hope, and Love are golden keys,
That brighten in the using;

Thou may'st unlock all heaven with these,
Thine every foe confusing.
Courage, faint heart! Why all these fears
And questions for the morrow?

Dear brother, wipe away thy tears—
God's love metes out thy sorrow!

TIMOTHY PETTIGREW'S WIFE'S HUSBAND.

(An American Sketch.)

BY MISS LESLIE.

(Concluded from page 97.)

"You needn't mind what he says," remarked Mrs. Pettigrew. "He was always a blunderbuss, and never understands nothing the right way. Well"-(turning to her husband)"let's hear what blunder you're at now." The company all gathered round Timothy, who, out of breath, and trembling with perturbation, sat down on a chair, still holding the child, who, fortunately, did not cry, but stared round with wide-opened eyes, as if greatly astonished at something.

"Even if you did, you'd never think of guessing this”—

"Don't talk more like a jackass than ever. Go on, I say-this minute, go on !"

made out by this here piece of newspaper-this "Well, then, listen with all your ears. I very paper-that the old Pitchburg lottery where we drew the blank, had cheated somehow in the drawing, and it was proved; so there was a great fuss about the cheating, and the whole had to be drawed over again, which has been "Wifey," said Timothy, "don't you remem-done-and so--and so our ticket this time”— ber a year ago you made me sell the old wagon to buy a ticket in that Pitchburg lottery, number seven thousand seven hundred and seventyseven that you dreamt of, and how we all kept it a secret for fear people should begin to call us fools for risking the money?"

"To be sure I remember it," answered the wife, "and I remember, too, its coming up a blank; so that was another reason for not telling nobody nothing about it. But for what are you bringing it up now?"

"Well," continued Timothy, "now just listen. After I'd took the baby home and put him to bed, and was sitting there beside him, as you told me to do, and not leave the child alone in the house to come back to the quilting, who should straggle along but Nulty McName. After he'd looked through the window, and seen you was not there, and nobody but me, he stepped in to light his pipe and rest himself, for he'd walked all the way from Kildeer Hill, and was walking on to Big Possum"

"Who cares where he walked?" interrupted Hulda. "What's Nult McName to me, or you, or anybody? Get on with the story, I tell you!"

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Say that word again, and I'll never listen while I live. Go on, I tell you!"

"Hear, then," proceeded Timothy. "As I was saying, he lit his pipe; and an old, black, stumpy one it was. Well, then, he lit his pipe with some cut tobaccor he took out of his pocket, it was the last of the tobaccor he had about him, and then he sot and talked awhile. When he went away, he left on the table the bit of newspaper the tobaccor had been wrapped in. So, after he was gone, I took up the paper, it was one of last week's, and begun to read it. And, only guess"—

"I won't!" said his wife. "I never guess nothing."

"Has come up a prize!" gasped Hulda Pettigrew.

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"You've hit it-you have guessed, after all" replied Timothy. 'You know it was number seven thousand seven hundred and seventyseven, was'nt it, now? Well, seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven has drawed-what do you think!-has drawed the biggest prize of all! Twenty thousand dollars! And that's our'n!"

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Mine, you booby, it's mine! War'nt it me that dreamt of that ticket? But where's the use of your telling all this stuff? To be sure it an't true."

"La! mumma," said the girl Polly, "it must be true, I guess; for pappy han't wit enough to make up sich a story.'

"Let

"There's the bit of newspaper," answered Timothy, triumphantly producing it. everybody read, and judge for themselves. This time I an't no fool, no how."

"Well, I do declare !"-exclaimed his wife, after looking over the paper-" it does seem actally true."

"Oh! good gracious !"-cried Polly-" if luck an't come at last!"

"Twenty thousand dollars !"-ejaculated her mother. "We're rich folks now, that we are. And our next move shall be into a brick house with two chimbleys, and into a town, too. I've thoughts of settling in Pitchburg."

The children jumped for joy; and Timothy, rising on his feet, and making an awkward attempt to jump also, set the baby to crying. But Mrs. Corndaffer kindly relieved him from his charge, and quieted the child with some gingerbread.

"Hush all your nonsense," said Mrs. Pettigrew, glancing round at her family. "Suppose we have got some money, are you all to run crazy about? People will think we've never been no better off than so many beggars. Too

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