The unchanging nature of a commodious fashion capable of adoption by the lower classes, may be well illustrated by fig. 2, plate II., which delineates the shoe or sandal worn by the rustics of ancient Rome. It is formed of a skin turned over the foot, and secured by thongs passing through the sides, and over the toe, crossing each other over the instep, and secured firmly round the ankle. Any person familiar with the prints of Pinelli, pictures of the modern brigands of the Abruzzi, or the models of the latter worthies in terra-cotta, to be met with in most curiosity-shops, will at once recognise those they wear as being of the same form. The traveller who has visited modern Rome, will also remember to have seen them on the feet of the peasantry who traverse the Pontine marshes; and the older Irish, and the comparatively modern Highlander, both wore similar ones; they were formed of the skin of the cow or deer, with the hair on them, and were held on the feet by [Illustration: Pl. 2.] leather thongs. They were the simplest and warmest kind of foot-covering to be obtained, when every man was his own shoemaker. There was a form of shoe worn at this early time, in which the toes were entirely uncovered, and of which an example is given in plate II., fig. 3. It is copied from a marble foot in the British museum. This shoe appears to be made of a pliable leather, which fits closely to the foot, for it was considered as a mark of rusticity to wear shoes larger than the foot, or which fitted in a loose and slovenly manner. The toes in this instance are left perfectly free; the upper leather is secured round the ankle by a tie, while a thong, ornamented by a stud in its centre, passing over the instep, and between the great and second toes, is secured to the sole in the manner of a sandal. In order that the ankle-bone should not be pressed on or incommoded in walking, the leather is sloped away, and rises around it to a point at the back of the leg. None but such as had served the office of edile were allowed to wear shoes of a red color, which we may therefore infer to have been a favorite color for shoes, as it appears to have been among the Hebrews, and as it is still in western Asia. The Roman senators wore shoes or buskins of a black color, with a crescent of gold or silver on the top of the foot. The emperor Aurelian forbade men to wear red, yellow, white, or green shoes, permitting them to be worn by women only, and Heliogabalus forbade women to wear gold or precious stones in their shoes, a fact which will aid us in understanding the sort of decoration indulged in by the earliest Hebrew women, of whose example Judith may be quoted as an instance, to which we have already referred.