some yellow. It is called a chapiney which they never wear under their shoes. Many of these are curiously painted; some of them I have also seen fairly gilt; so uncomely a thing, in my opinion, that it is a pity this foolish custom is not clean banished and exterminated out of the city. There are many of these chapineys of a great height, even half a yard high, which maketh many of their women that are very short, seem much taller than the tallest women we have in England. Also, I have heard it observed among them, that by how much the nobler a woman is, by so much the higher are her chapineys. All their gentlewomen, and most of their wives and widows that are of any wealth, are assisted and supported either by men or women, when they walk abroad, to the end they might not fall. They are borne up most commonly by the left arm, otherwise they might quickly take a fall." In Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare, a wood-cut of such a chapiney, or choppine, is given, which is here copied, and it is an excellent example of the thing, showing the decoration which was at times bestowed on it.

Douce quotes some curious particulars of this fashion, in "Raymond's Voyage through Italy," 1648, and the following curious account of the

chopine occurs: "This place (Venice) is much frequented by the walking may-poles: I mean the women, they wear their coats half too long for their bodies, being mounted on their chippeens (which are as high as a man's leg), they walke betweene two handmaids, majestically deliberating of every step they take." Howel also says of the Venetian women,

They are low and of small stature for the most part, which makes them to raise their bodies upon high

was a woman.

shoes, called chapins, which gave me occasion to say that the Venetian ladies were made of three things, one part of them was wood, meaning their chapins, another part was their apparel, and the third part The senate hath often endeavoured to take away the wearing of those high shoes, but all women are so passionately delighted with this kind of state, that no law can wean them from it. Douce adds, that "some have supposed that the jealousy of Italian husbands gave rise to the invention of the chopine," and quotes a story from a French author to shew their dislike to an alteration; he also says, that "the first ladies who rejected the use of the chopine, were the daughters of the Doge Dominico Contareno, about the year 1670." The chopine, or some kind of high shoe, was occasionally used in England. Bulwer, in his "Artificial Changeling," p. 550, complains of this fashion as a monstrous affectation, and says that his country women therein imitated the Venetian and Persian ladies. In Sandy's travels, 1615, there is a figure of a Turkish lady with chopines, and it is not improbable that the Venetians might

have borrowed them from the Greek islands in the Archipelago. We know that something similar was in use amongst the ancient Greeks. Xenophon in Economics, mentions the wife of Ischomachus as wearing high shoes, for increasing her stature. They are still worn by the women in many parts of Turkey, but more particularly at Aleppo." Douce's notice of their antiquity is curiously corroborated by the discovery in the tombs of Ancient Egypt, of such shoes, they are formed of a stout sole of wood, to which is affixed four round props, raising the wearer a foot in height, specimens were among the collections of Mr. Salt, our Consul in Egypt, from which some of the choicest Egyptian antiquities in our national collection were obtained. The other remark of Douce's, that they were probably derived from the Greek islands of the Archipelago, is confirmed by the fact that high-soled boots and shoes were much coveted by the ladies there, to raise their stature, and were worn when chopines had long been disused; thus the highsoled boots delineated in pl. 4, fig. 13, are found upon the feet of " a young lady of Argentiera,"-one of

these islands, in a print dated 1700; and, in another of the same date, giving the costume of a lady of the neighbouring island of Naxis, the shoe shown in fig. 14, is worn.

Of the modern European nations with whom we have been most in contact-Spain, France, and the Netherlands, their boots and shoes have so nearly resembled our own, as to render a detailed description scarcely necessary. Indeed, as France has been tacitly submitted to as the arbiter elegantiarum in all matters of dress, much has been derived from thence.

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There was, however, a French shoe that we do not ever appear to have adopted; it was made low in the quarters, and ended at the instep; there was no covering for the heel or the sides of the foot beyond it. The fashion spread to Venice and the figure of a Venetian lady of 1750, has supplied us with the specimen in pl. 4, fig. 15.