delicacy of the skin; some persons are constitutionally predisposed to corns, the slightest friction or pressure being sufficient to cause irritation, or, as in some cases, to develope a corn that has some time been lying dormant.

The illustrations given in former chapters of fashions, will sufficently prove the cause of distortion of the feet, and the result of this infliction of pain for the sake of fashion has been a plentiful harvest of corns.

Every one who has corns knows and feels that pressure is the cause- "no one knows better where the shoe pinches than he who wears it." Yet few persons know why it hurts, or are aware how the remedy should be applied.

Sometimes a shoe is too large, often too small, very often too short, but generally the wrong shape altogether. The fault is not so much in the shoes themselves, as in the lasts from which they are made, there the cause is to be found, and there it has been my study for many years to apply the remedy.

The best materials may have been used for sole and

upper leather; the most exquisite closing and stabbing been put in, till the work "looked like print ;" the workmanship may have been "first rate," but deficient in the primary and most essential part-the suitable form of the last on which the article was to be moulded the boot or shoe would not be a suitable or comfortable covering for the foot, and the unfortunate wearer again finds that he has put his feet into "the shoemaker's stocks."

Every one who wishes to be comfortably fitted should have a pair of lasts made expressly for his own use; experience has taught me, and doubtless many other masters who have had much to do with bespoke work for tender or peculiar feet, that no plan is equal to this to secure a good fit and save inconvenience and disappointment for the future.

The length and the width are now every day affairs, but the judgment of fitting is another thing, and here is the true skill.

do or

A last fitted up to the length and width may it may not; it may do by chance or fail of necessity, but if fitting be anything, it is a skilful adaptation of

the last to the true form and requirements of the foot

The outlines-1, 2, 3, will shew the direction and bearing of three different feet, neither of which would be comfortably fitted if the length and width were the only points attended to; for No. 1 we require a straight formed last with an equal proportion of wood on each side the centre line. No. 2, requires considerable fulness of the inside joint, to allow for a bunion; the great toe requires a bed for the ball to rest in; the waist must be very hollow, else the quarter will bag; while No. 3 requires a wide flat tread and great thickness of wood, for the toes which are covered with corns.

Many persons have an idea that right and left shoe are comparatively modern invention, but the illusions and illustrations to the contrary, in pp. 38-43 disprove this: straight lasts are decidedly a modern invention, and notwithstanding what many persons say to the contrary, are decidedly inferior to a wellformed right and left pair

The great evil has been that all right and left lasts, of late have been crooked. It was thought in abandoning the straight last with its faults, that a perfect fit could be secured in rights and lefts, and from one extreme, as is generally the case in fashion, the opposite was adopted, and a twisted right and left. made the matter still worse.

It was thought nothing could be right and left but that which took a decided turn, and the consequence has been that for years lasts have been made with an ugly twist inward, where no wood was required, and on the outside, where the toes with all their tenderness and liability to injury have required thickness and breadth, nothing has been left.

I have pointed out this fault to last makers a thou

sand times-have stood by them at their work, and have seen the part-where, of all things I wished the room to be left-cruelly sliced off, or rasped away; the consequence to the unfortunate wearer of a shoe or boot made on that last must have been-months of torture.

Some workmen however, have at last seen the error they have all along been committing, and adopted the improved form, wondering how it was never thought of before.

No. 1 represents a sketch of the foot and the sole