.

Top-boots are very pretty wear for men of the right height and right
sort of leg when they fit perfectly--that is difficult on fat
calves--and are cleaned to perfection, which is also difficult unless
you have a more than ordinarily clever groom.

For men of moderate means, the patent black leather Napoleon, which
costs from 3_l._ 10_s._ to 4_l._ 4_s._, and can be cleaned with a wet
sponge in five minutes, is the neatest and most economical boot--one in
which travelling does not put you under any obligation to your host's
servants.

I have often found the convenience of patent leather boots when staying
with a party at the house of a master of hounds, while others, as the
hounds were coming out of the kennel, were in an agony for tops
entrusted two or three days previously to a not-to-be-found servant. In
this point of the boots I differ from the author of "A Word ere we
Start;" but then, squires of ten thousand a-year are not supposed to
understand the shifts of those who on a twentieth part of that income
manage to enjoy a good deal of sport with all sorts of hounds and all
sorts of horses.

There is a certain class of sporting snobs who endeavour to enhance
their own consequence or indulge their cynical humour by talking with
the utmost contempt of any variation from the kind of hunting-dress in
use, in their own particular district. The best commentary on the
supercilious tailoring criticism of these gents is to be found in the
fact that within a century every variety of hunting clothes has been in
and out of fashion, and that the dress in fashion with the Quorn hunt in
its most palmy days was not only the exact reverse of the present
fashion in that flying country, but, if comfort and convenience are to
be regarded, as ridiculous as brass helmets, tight stocks, and
buttoned-up red jackets for Indian warfare. It consisted, as may be seen
in old Alken's and Sir John Dean Paul's hunting sketches, of a
high-crowned hat, a high tight stock, a tight dress coat, with narrow
skirts that could protect neither the chest, stomach, or thighs, long
tight white cord breeches, and pale top-boots thrust low down the leg,
the tops being supposed to be cleaned with champagne. Leather breeches,
caps, and brown top-boots were voted slow in those days. But the men
went well as they do in every dress.

"Old wiseheads, complacently smoothing the brim,
May jeer at my velvet, and call it a whim;
They may think in a ca