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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 elsewhere; what are they but eight-and-six-penny worth of discomfort!  They will no more accommodate a decent foot than the old general would have turned his back in a charge, or cut off his grizzled mustachios.  If it wasn’t for the look of the thing, one might as well shove one’s foot into a box-iron.  We wouldn’t be the man that christened them, and take a trifle to meet the fighting old marshal, even in a world of peace; in short, they are ambulating humbugs, and the would-be respectables that wear ’em are a huge fraternity of “false pretenders.”  Don’t trust ’em, reader; they are sure to do you! there’s deceit in their straps, prevarication in their trousers, and connivance in their distended braces.  We never met but one exception to the above rule—­it was John Smith.  Every reader has a friend of the name of John Smith—­in confidence, that is the man.  We would have sworn by him; in fact, we did swear by him, for ten long years he was our oracle.  Never shall we forget the first, the only time our faith was shaken.  We gazed upon and loved his honest face; we reciprocated the firm pressure of his manly grasp; our eyes descended in admiration even unto the ground on which he stood, and there, upon that very ground—­the ground whose upward growth of five feet eight seemed Heaven’s boast, an “honest man”—­we saw what struck us sightless to all else—­a pair of Bluchers!