boots and shoes occur in this period. We should have the various military boots under the Empire, especially the Hessian boot so common in the early part of this century, and which in England was not quite given up until the Wellington supplanted it. If it be true that Bonaparte’s lack of boots kept him out of India, and led him into the jaws of temptation, the boots in vogue in 1795 may be regarded as historic, and ought to be represented in a French collection. We should like also to see a specimen of the pumps of the Directory, and the top-boots of the Revolution, an outcome of that Anglomania which was one of its early symptoms. But with the exception of a small boy’s boot of the age of Louis XVI., we get nothing in the way of male foot-gear until we come to a postillion’s boot (18) of the time of Louis XV. To the same period probably belongs a long flexible boot in shagreen leather, made to completely cover the leg. It was tightened by means of buckles at the top and below the knee. Of the age of Louis XIV. we have three remarkable boots with funnel tops--imperious, adventurous, impressive. One is an example of the bellows boot, the _botte à soufflet_; another of the cauldron boot, the _botte à chaudron_ (19). The latter has a singular appendage round the ankle. The piece which held the spur is a sort of double flap, apparently very inconvenient for riding or walking. The former is a handsome boot, the leg being made square rather than round. The third (20) is carefully made, with a top so enormous that a man could hardly wear a pair without straddling. This is the more likely as the foot is remarkably small. Evidently it belonged to some _petit maître_ of the court of the Grand Monarque. Compare it with our next, of the same period (21), and you have a vivid idea of what it cost humanity to produce the pretty little furbelowed Louis Quatorze seigneurs.