About Breeches and Boots. 125 



gentleman has had a little drop this morning.' " Need it 

 be added that the good-natured judge led the Court and 

 spectators in a roar of laughter at his own expense. 



As to the little dainty riding-boots worn by ladies, they 

 ought only to be made by poetical bootmakers. You see 

 them in the hands of ladies'-maids, who pass you in a corri- 

 dor with a giggle as they pretend to hide some other part of 

 female equestrian attire. Apropos de hottes, a friend of 

 mine, a very light weight, whose back many a good man 

 has seen in the Leicestershire and Northampton country 

 was staying in a country house during the hunting season. 

 Like many good riders, he was a great dandy about his top- 

 boots, which were standing outside his dressing-room door. 

 On going upstairs to put them on, he found they were gone, 

 and he heard the pattering of ladies' feet in rapid retreat 

 down the passage, and in his dressing-room was a very 

 pretty girl, who, thinking the owner had gone out, had just 

 succeeded in drawing one of them on. My friend, poor 

 devil ! was married, and thus the groundwork of a sensation 

 novel was lost for ever. 



Country gentlemen and substantial old farmers, who from 

 age or weight had given up riding, were faithful to the 

 breeches, and in their grounds, or on market-days, might be 

 seen in very fine light drab cloth breeches and long gaiters 

 of the same, coming down over well-polished roomy shoes. 

 The last pair of breeches and gaiters I saw in Parliament 

 were worn by Mr. Patterson, member for the City, an old 

 Radical, but a dear, fat, God-fearing old Radical, not one 

 of your foaming democrats of to-day. He always went by 

 the name of old " G — ts and Gaiters," and was very popular, 

 and Punch immortalized him by one of his best jokes, 

 " multum hi parvo — Patterson in smalls." Old Patterson 

 carried the Corn Bill up to the Lords in 1846 as one of the 

 " Message from the Commons," and the late Lord Shaftes- 



