Shoes of the old fashion, with high heels and buckles, appear in prints of the early part of 1800; but buckles became unfashionable, and shoe-strings eventually triumphed, although less costly and elegant in their construction. The prince of Wales was petitioned by the alarmed buckle-makers, to discard his new-fashioned strings, and take again to buckles, by way of bolstering up their trade; but the fate of these articles was sealed, and the prince’s good-natured compliance with their wishes, did little to prevent their downfall. The buckles worn at the end of 1700, were generally exceedingly small, and so continued until they were finally disused.
Early in the reign of George III., the close fitting gentleman’s boot became general; the material used for the leg was termed grain-leather, the flesh side being left brown, and the grain blackened, and kept to the sight. In currying this sort of leather for the boot-leg, it went, in the lower part, through an ingenious process of contraction, to give it life; so that the heel of the wearer might go into it and come out again the easier; the boot, at the same time, when on, catching snugly round the small of the leg, in a sort of stocking fit.
After this appeared the “Hessian,” a boot worn over the tight-fitting pantaloon, the uppeaking front bearing a silk tassel. This boot was introduced from Germany, about 1789, and sometimes was called the Austrian boot. Rees, in his “Art and Mystery of the Cordwainer,” published in 1813, says, “The form at first was odious, as the close boot was then in wear, but like many fashions, at first frightful, it was then pitied, and at last adopted.”
The top-boot was worn early in the reign of George III., and took the fulness of the Hessian in its lower part, and on the introduction of the “Wellington,” the same fulness was retained.
To describe the last-named boot were useless, it has become, par excellence, the common boot, and is perhaps as universally known as the fame of the distinguished hero Wellington.
CHAPTER III.
ON THE MORE MODERN FORMS OF FOREIGN BOOTS AND SHOES.
UPON critically examining the various forms assumed by the coverings for the feet adopted by the nations around us, we shall find that they were in no small degree modified by the circumstances with which they were surrounded, or the necessities of the climate they inhabited.
Thus the northern nations enswathed their legs in skins, and used the same material for the shoes, binding the whole in warm folds about the leg, the thongs being fastened to them in the manner represented in [plate IV]., fig. 1, and which is copied from a full length figure of a Russian boor, in 1768. The sandal of a Russian lady of the same period, is given in the same plate, fig. 2, and the men of Friesland at the same time, wore sandals or shoes of a similar construction, the common people generally wearing a close leathern shoe and clog, something like those in use in the
