BRAVOES.
Martin Schongauer.

Cloth and woollen boots and shoes, as were worn in the Middle Ages, have been recommended for modern wear as being more healthy, and as allowing the natural perspiration of the foot to exhale, their sponsors affirming that "cloth and wool are perfectly suitable and safe for wet weather, as the wetting of the wool does not chill the feet, the heat of which promptly evaporates the moisture from the covering, which soon dries." It must, however, be admitted that with a cloth covering, the dirt and mud of a London winter would be a trial, and here, doubtless, we have a reason for the cobblestones of mediæval towns. Cobble-stones are clean, but must at once be ruled out of the question for London. Cobble-stones would indeed add a fresh horror to London life. But is it too much to expect the richest city in the world, with its thousands of unemployed, to keep its streets clean? Is there any reason why large cities should not be kept clean as well as small cities?

"Boots and shoes should be roomy, to prevent the toes from being squeezed together, and should be so made that the great toe is not pressed against its neighbours, but is encouraged to lie in a straight line drawn from the heel to the root of the great toe. The heel of the boot should be low and broad."[31]

The Greek ideal of the foot is the true one. The Greeks rightly regarded the foot as an undeveloped hand, and they endeavoured in their sculpture to impart that hand-like character to their feet. One has only to notice the flexible toes of new-born and young babies, in order to perceive the reasonableness of this position. The Greeks in their sculpture made a distinct division between the great toe and the rest of the toes, as between the thumb and the fingers of the hand—the three toes well forward in a bunch; the first the longest, the next a little shorter, and the third shorter still; the little toe by itself, raised up. Now compare with this any natural foot habituated to shoes or boots. The bunch of three toes is pressed back, and also sideways against the great toe, thus losing the division between them and the great toe, and destroying the true contour of the foot. The pads of all the toes are pressed sideways instead of being immediately under the nails, and the foot has entirely lost its original character, and has become grotesquely malformed by corns, bunions, and similar growths. The most beautiful natural foot, the only beautiful foot which we ever remember having seen, was a cast in Sir Edgar Boehm's studio of the foot of a black woman who had never worn shoes.

Of late there has been a disposition to return to the sandal as a covering or rather protection for children's feet (one fears that it will be long before grown-ups adopt the sandal, except perhaps at the seaside or in the country). The change is a healthy one from every point of view. Upon æsthetic grounds it is especially welcome. One walks along the street during the summer months, the mind perhaps preoccupied, and the eye suddenly lights upon the rosy feet of one of these little ones as they trip along the street. One involuntarily exclaims, "What a charming design! What a beautiful piece of ornament!" Of a truth, in place of the uninteresting product of the shoemaker, which we had become so inured and accustomed to, one is suddenly introduced to that masterpiece of the Great Designer, the human foot, and the foot, too, in its natural state, before it has become crippled and distorted by long confinement in a leather prison.

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