The circumstances which led to the agitation
may be briefly told.

In Europe we doff our hats upon entering
a house; in Asia they doff their slippers.
The arrangement in both cases is dictated by
practical good sense. In Europe we wear a
covering for the head which is light and easily
removable, and which, in civil life at any rate,
is so ugly that no sane man desires to wear
it any longer than he is obliged. The latter
may not be the original reason why we cast it as
an expression of courtesy, but the reason might
pass in the present day. It is most certainly
of all articles of costume the most easily
dispensed with. To take off one's coat, for instance,
to a lady in the park, as an illustration to a bow,
would be inconvenient; and to remove that garment
upon entering a house would scarcely have
a graceful effect, if it involved an appearance in
the drawing-room in one's shirt-sleeves. As for
taking off one's boots, considering that the
process can seldom be effected without the aid
of machinery, and even then is apt to involve
an undignified struggle, I should like to see the
man who would submit to such an infliction
whenever he dined out, or made a morning call;
to say nothing of the unpleasantness of walking
about the house in his corns, and the battle to
get the boots on again when he took his leave!
The Asiatic is subjected to conditions precisely
the reverse. Tell him to take off his turban,
and if he be a man of any caste or consideration,
he will feel simply insulted. The indignity of
appearing anywhere but in his bath with a bare
head would be revolting to his feelings.
Moreover, he very frequently wears a turban
comprised of from twenty to sixty yards of muslin,
upon the folding of which he, or his servant,
bestows more attention than Beau Brammel ever
bestowed on his cravats. Fashion, as well as
dignity, forbids its removal. His feet, on the other
hand (if such an apparent confusion of terms be
permissible), afford an admirable opportunity for
the display of any amount of politeness. As his
coat is all dressing gown, so his boots are all
slippers. He walks but little, and when he is not
walking his great comfort is to kick his boots
off. Comfort and courtesy combined—could
there be a happier combination? Thus it is
that there is as good reason why the Asiatic
should take off his slippers as that the European
should take off his hat, upon entering a house.

The two customs, while dictated equally by
practical convenience, have the additional
advantage that they do not necessarily conflict.
There is no reason whatever why an European
gentleman should not hang up his hat in the hall
because an Asiatic gentleman has left his slippers
on the door-mat. One would fancy that West and
East could not meet in greater harmony. But
unfortunately the harmony has not always been
unbroken. Other things being equal, all would be
well; but other things never are equal, and
circumstances have from time to time arisen which
have caused not a little confusion in the
international etiquette.

The Great Shoe Question arose through the
rapid development of Young Bengal, of late
years, in European education and ideas. The
Bengalees, our readers scarcely need be told, are
a very different race from the natives of the
north of India. They are not fighting animals.
They are an easy oily people, who never undergo
physical exertion when they can avoid it; they
get fat when they feed well, with the certainty
of a pig or a goose; and they always feed in
proportion to their income, so a rise in salary
among them is almost immediately marked
by an increase in size. Leanness, indeed, is a
proclamation of poverty, and a Bengalee seldom
sees his toes after he has made his fortune. But,
contrary to the ordinary rule among Europeans,
inactivity of body does not beget inactivity of
mind. The Bengalees are wonderfully quick to
learn and acute to comprehend; industrious to
execute and facile to adapt. In cunning and
craft they are more than a match for any
European, and did not the latter throw honesty into
the scale, he would have no chance against his
Bengalee brother. As it is, "the best policy"
gains the day in Asia as in Europe. The Bengalee
considers that the European takes a mean
advantage of him in this respect, because the
weapon is one to which he is unaccustomed; but
our countrymen, it is pleasant to think, are
content to remain under the imputation, and have
not yet consented to fight the Bengalees with
the weapons of their choice. The ingenuity of
these people has long since been distinguished in
arts and manufactures. In their imitation of
the productions of European industry, they
almost equal the Chinese. Given an article to
copy, and they will produce its exact counterpart,
from a carriage to a coat. It is true that
if they are not looked after, the carriage will be
found weak as to the wheels, uncertain as to the
springs, warped as to the panels, and that in a
short time it will neither run nor hang, nor do
anything (if it has been much in the sun) except
tumble to pieces. It is true also that the coat,
unless carefully superintended, will be reproduced
with any patches or other disfigurements
which may have belonged to the original model,
and that the coat will come into as many pieces
as Mr. Buckstone's in a farce. But these
defects on the part of the workmen are moral;
they do not imply want of skill. On the contrary,
considering that he could make an effective
article if he would, the deception must be
considered a decided test of talent. These are
instances of the many ways in which the
Bengalee, if he condescended to be honest, could
beat the European hollow. There is one business,
by the way, in which trickery cannot be
introduced, except at the almost certain risk of
punishment—this is, book-keeping. The
Bengalee has an instinctive turn for figures, and the
class who cultivate it make the best accountants
in the world. Being cut off in a great measure
from producing a spurious article, they give us
the result of their patience, order, and exactitude,
in an unadulterated form. Thus it is that
while, for most departments of manufacture,
nobody will employ native workmen who can