Most persons know something of the cruel injustice to which the feet are subjected, and the extraordinary distortions and diseases to which they are liable in consequence. The foot's fingers are the slaves in the republic of the body. Their black leathern integument is only the mask of their servile condition. They bear the burdens, while the hands, their white masters, handle the money and wear the rings. They are crowded promiscuously in narrow prisons, while each of the hand's fingers claims its separate apartment, leading from the antechamber, in the dainty glove. As a natural consequence of all this, their faculties are cramped, they grow into ignoble shapes, they become callous by long abuse, and all their natural gifts are crushed and trodden out of them. Dr. Plumer is the Garrison of these oppressed members of the body corporeal. He comes to break their chains, to lift their bowed figures, to strengthen their weakness, to restore them to the dignity of digits. To do this, he begins where every sensible man would, by contemplating the natural foot as it appears in infancy, unspoiled as yet by social corruptions, in adults fortunate enough to have escaped these destructive influences, in the grim skeleton aspect divested of its outward disguises. We will give the reader two views of the latter kind, illustrating the longitudinal and transverse arches before spoken of. [Illustration] A man who walks on natural surfaces, with his feet unprotected by any artificial defences, calls the action of these arches into full play at every step. The longitudinal arch is the most strikingly marked of the two. In some races and in certain individuals it is much developed, so as to give the high instep which is prized as an evidence of good blood. The Arab says that a stream of water can flow under his foot without touching its sole. Under the conditions supposed, of a naked foot on a natural surface, the arches of the foot will commonly maintain their integrity, and give the noble savage or the barefooted Scotch lassie the elasticity of gait which we admire in the children of Nature.