points: that high heels are a necessity for any lady who wishes to keep
her dress clean from the Stygian mud of our streets, and that without a
tight corset 'the ordinary number of petticoats and etceteras' cannot be
properly or conveniently held up. Now, it is quite true that as long as
the lower garments are suspended from the hips a corset is an absolute
necessity; the mistake lies in not suspending all apparel from the
shoulders. In the latter case a corset becomes useless, the body is left
free and unconfined for respiration and motion, there is more health, and
consequently more beauty. Indeed all the most ungainly and uncomfortable
articles of dress that fashion has ever in her folly prescribed, not the
tight corset merely, but the farthingale, the vertugadin, the hoop, the
crinoline, and that modern monstrosity the so-called 'dress improver'
also, all of them have owed their origin to the same error, the error of
not seeing that it is from the shoulders, and from the shoulders only,
that all garments should be hung.

And as regards high heels, I quite admit that some additional height to
the shoe or boot is necessary if long gowns are to be worn in the street;
but what I object to is that the height should be given to the heel only,
and not to the sole of the foot also. The modern high-heeled boot is, in
fact, merely the clog of the time of Henry VI., with the front prop left
out, and its inevitable effect is to throw the body forward, to shorten
the steps, and consequently to produce that want of grace which always
follows want of freedom.

Why should clogs be despised? Much art has been expended on clogs. They
have been made of lovely woods, and delicately inlaid with ivory, and
with mother-of-pearl. A clog might be a dream of beauty, and, if not too
high or too heavy, most comfortable also. But if there be any who do not
like clogs, let them try some adaptation of the trouser of the Turkish