About Breeches and Boots. 12a 



terregnum of stocking (probably silk). A gallant hussar 

 appears in pantaloons and Hessians, walking with a lady 

 whose feet and ankles, according to now modern custom, 

 are confined by a dress absurdly small at the bottom, and 

 who wears a fire-scoop bonnet, not unlike the fashion of to- 

 day. The dandy top-boot and the country top-boot in the 

 days of our grandfathers were very diflferent things. The 

 story has so frequently been repeated, amongst others by 

 Captain Gronow, that probably it is true, that Hoby, in St. 

 James's Street, on a customer complaining "that his boots 

 had burst the first time he walked in them," exclaimed : 

 *' Good heavens, sir, surely you never locdhed in those 

 boots 1 " There are, or a few weeks ago there were, in St. 

 James's Street some jockey boots — evidently nothing more 

 than a loose, black kind of kid stocking — marked to weigh 

 three ounces only, and I venture to say they would burst if 

 walked in. The home-made country top-boots of our grand- 

 fathers were a reality in wild country districts, and were 

 meant for wear and not for ornament, and were of good 

 strong leather, and made roomy enough to receive a woollen 

 stocking, and to allow of the circulation of the blood, and 

 strong enough to turn brambles and thorns in narrow 

 bridle-paths or in a thick covert. Country gentlemen, 

 farmers, doctors, and parsons who kept a horse could not do 

 without their tops and breeches ; the parsons sometimes 

 compromised matters by wearing a drab cloth top which 

 buttoned round below the knee and the top of the calf, and 

 which looked less like fox-hunting— not that parsons Avere 

 averse to hunting, by any means — but the fact was that the 

 farmers, being churchwardens, waywardens, overseers, and 

 fining all the parochial offices, would not spend a halfpenny 

 out of the rates if they could help it except on the main 

 road to the market, and country lanes, which really were 

 parish roads, were left to shift for themselves, and became 



