Why most certainly _yes_. There is a road on which both may travel, a place in which all may meet. I mean the boot (preferably the cloth boot) with elastic sides. Already it is worn by many of our clergy.[76] It offends neither party, it satisfies, or should satisfy, both; and for my part, I see in it one of those compromises upon which our greatness is founded. Let us then determine to be in this matter neither _sheep_ nor _goats_. It is better, far better, to admit some sheepishness into our goatishness, or (if our extremists _will_ have it so), some goatishness into our sheepishness--it is better, I say, to enter one fold and be at peace together, than to imperil our most cherished and beloved tenets in a mere wrangle upon non-essentials. For, after all what is essential to us? Not boots, I think, but righteousness. Righteousness may express itself in boots, it is just and good that it should do so, but to see righteousness in the boot itself is to fall into the gross materialism of the middle ages, and to forget our birthright and the mess of pottage. Yours (my dear Burfle) in all charity, JOSIAH LAMBKIN. XV. Lambkin’s Letter to a French Friend Lambkin’s concern for the Continent was deep and lasting. He knew the Western part of this Division of the Globe from a constant habit of travel which would take him by the Calais-Bâle, passing through the St. Gothard by night, and so into the storied plains of Italy.[77] It was at Milan that he wrote his _Shorter Anglo-Saxon Grammar_, and in Assisi that he corrected the proofs of his article on the value of oats as human food. Everyone will remember the abominable outrage at Naples, where he was stabbed by a coachman in revenge for his noble and disinterested protection of a poor cab-horse; in a word, Italy is full of his vacations, and no name is more familiar to the members of the Club at the Villa Marinoni.