[ILLUSTRATION:  NO FOLLOWERS ALLOWED.]

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A PARTY OF MEDALLERS.

A subscription has been opened for a medal to commemorate the return of Lord John Russell for the city of London.  We would suggest that his speech to the citizens against the corn-laws would form an appropriate inscription for the face of the medal, while that to the Huntingdonshire farmers in favour of them would be found just the thing for the reverse.

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A CHAPTER ON BOOTS.

“Boots?  Boots!” Yes, Boots! we can write upon boots—­we can moralise upon boots; we can convert them, as Jacques does the weeping stag in “As You Like It,” (or, whether you like it or not,) into a thousand similes.  First, for—­but, “our sole’s in arms and eager for the fray,” and so we will at once head our dissertation as we would a warrior’s host with

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WELLINGTONS.

These are the most judicious species of manufactured calf-skin; like their great “godfather,” they are perfect as a whole; from the binding at the top to the finish at the toe, there is a beautiful unity about their well-conceived proportions:  kindly considerate of the calf, amiably inclined to the instep, and devotedly serviceable to the whole foot, they shed their protecting influence over all they encase.  They are walked about in not only as protectors of the feet, but of the honour of the wearer.  Quarrel with a man if you like, let your passion get its steam up even to blood-heat, be magnificent while glancing at your adversary’s Brutus, grand as you survey his chin, heroic at the last button of his waistcoat, unappeased at the very knees of his superior kersey continuations, inexorable at the commencement of his straps, and about to become abusive at his shoe-ties, the first cooler of your wrath will be the Hoby-like arched instep of his genuine Wellingtons, which, even as a drop of oil upon the troubled ocean, will extend itself over the heretofore ruffled surface of your temper.—­Now for

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BLUCHERS.

Well, we don’t like them.  They are shocking impostors—­walking discomforts!  They had no right to be made at all; or, if made, ’twas a sin for them to be so christened (are Bluchers Christians?).

They are Wellingtons cut down; so, in point of genius, was their baptismal sponsor:  but these are vilely tied, and that the hardy old Prussian would never have been while body and soul held together.  He was no beauty, but these are decidedly ugly commodities, chiefly tenanted by swell purveyors of cat’s-meat, and burly-looking prize-fighters.  They have the fortiter in re for kicking, but not the suaviter in modo for corns.  Look at them villanously treed out at the “Noah’s Ark” and