The first obvious impression produced by the Cluny collection is that Boots and Shoes, occupying to the rest of the human apparel much the same relation that the labouring classes do in society, are, like their human antitypes, extremely tenacious of old forms, and never alter except under the energising influence of Christian civilisation, and even then only repeat through various stages the changes between the pointed and square toe. This impression would be sustained by any other collection of foot-gear, special or general. There is, for example, a case of Roman shoes in the Guildhall Museum, in which there is a woman’s half-boot so nearly resembling those worn in our own times, that it would be very easy at the first glance to doubt its authenticity, and to imagine it nothing more than an English roadside relic, the cast wear of a modern tramp. Mediæval chroniclers trace back the peaked shoes to individual necessity, or the whims of an impious court; but we have found the twisted pointed toe as early as the Ninth Century, and existing both in Italy and Germany long before Fulk suffered from bunions, or the Red King’s courtiers indulged in base and worthless eccentricities. It is less doubtful that the pointed shoe turned back on the instep is a fashion universal throughout the East and Northern Africa, and that it has been so from ancient times. I have grouped on Fig. VI. (page 8) a number of specimens shown at Cluny: from India, ancient and modern, Persia, Africa, China, Annam, Albania, and Lapland, showing how general the fashion is, and how similar are the forms it takes in lands remote and strange. From these examples it will be seen how very slight is the difference in form between the shoes worn by the ladies of the court of Louis XV. and those of Algeria and the far East, the advantage in true beauty and grace being entirely in favour of the latter. [Illustration: BOOTS AND SHOES.--IV. 27. German (Sixteenth Century); 28. Peaked (Seventeenth Century); 29. Flemish, 1752; 30. German (Early Sixteenth Century); 31. Peaked (Fifteenth Century).]