unless you see a pavior or bricklayer coming out with his three penn'orth on his bread-a better sight than the glutton's waddling away from the fishmonger's. A poulterer's is a deadbodied business, with its birds and their lax necks. We dislike

to see a bird anywhere but in the open air, alive and quick. Of all creatures, restraint and death become its winged vivacity the least. For the same reason we hate aviaries. Dog-shops are tolerable. A cook-shop does not mingle the agreeable with the useful. We hate its panes, with Ham and Beef scratched upon them in white letters. An ivory-turner's is pleasant, with its red and white chessmen, and little big-headed Indians on elephants; so is a toy-shop, with its endless delights for children. A coach-maker's is not disagreeable, if you can see the painting and panels. An umbrella-shop only reminds one of a rainy day, unless it is a shop for sticks also, which, as we have already shown, are meritorious articles. The curiosity-shop is sometimes very amusing, with its mandarins, stuffed birds, odd old carved faces, and a variety of things as indescribable as bits of dreams. The green-grocer carries his recommendation in his epithet. The hair-dressers are also interesting as far as their hair goes, but not as their heads-we mean the heads in their windows. One of the shops we like least is an angling repository, with its rod for a sign, and a fish dancing in the agonies of death at the end of it. We really cannot see what equanimity there is in jerking a lacerated carp out. water by the jaws, merely because it has not the power of making a noise; for we presume that the most philosophic of anglers would hardly delight in catching shrieking fish. An optician's is not very amusing, unless it has those reflecting-glasses in which you see your face run off on each side into attenuated width, or upwards and downwards in the same manner, in dreary longitude. A saddler's is good, because it reminds one of horses. A Christian sword-maker's or gun-maker's is edifying. A glass-shop is a beautiful spectacle; it reminds one of the splendors of a fairy palace. We like a blacksmith's for the sturdy looks and thumpings of the men, the swarthy color, the fiery sparkles and the thunder-breathing throat of the furnace. Of other houses of traffic, not common in the streets, there is

something striking to us in the large, well-conditioned horses of the brewers, and the rich smoke rolling from out their chimneys. We also greatly admire a wharf, with its boats, barrels, and packages, and the fresh air from the water, not to mention the smell of pitch. It carries us at once a hundred miles over the water. For similar reasons, the crabbedest old lane has its merits in our eyes, if there is a sail-maker's in it, or a boatbuilder's and water at the end. How used old Roberts of Lambeth to gratify the aspiring modesty of our school-coats, when he welcomed us down to his wherries and captains on a holiday, and said, "Blue against Black at any time," meaning the Westminster boys! And the colleges will ratify his praise, taking into consideration the difference of the numbers that go there from either cloisters. But of all shops in the streets a We would rather pay a shil

print-seller's pleases us the most. ling to Mr. Colnaghi, Mr. Molteno, or Messieurs Moon and Boys, to look at their windows on one of their best-furnished days, than we would for many an exhibition. We can see fine engravings there, translations from Raphael and Titian, which are newer than hundreds of originals. We do not despise a pastry-cook's, though we would rather not eat tarts and puffs before the half-averted face of the prettiest of accountants, especially with a beggar watching and praying all the while at the door. We need not expatiate on the beauties of a florist's, where you see unwithering leaves, and roses made immortal. A dress warehouse is sometimes really worth stopping at, for its flowered draperies and richly-colored shawls. But one's pleasure is apt to be disturbed (ye powers of gallantry! bear witness to the unwilling pen that writes it) by the fair faces that come forth, and the half-polite, half-execrating expression of the tradesman that bows them out; for here takes place the chief enjoyment of the mystery yclept shopping; and here, while some ladies give the smallest trouble unwillingly, others have an infinity of things turned over, for the mere purpose of wasting their own time and the shopman's. We have read of a choice of a wife by cheese. It is difficult to speak of preference in such matters, and all such single modes of trial must be something equivocal; but we must say, that of all modes of the

kind, we should desire no better way of seeing what ladies we admired most, and whom least, than by witnessing this trial of them at a linen-draper's counter.

CHAPTER XL.

A nearer View of some of the Shops.

IN the general glance that we have taken at shops, we found ourselves unwillingly compelled to pass some of them too quickly. It is the object therefore of the present article to enter into those more attractive thresholds, and look a little about us. We imagine a fine day; time, about noon; scene, any good brilliant street. The ladies are abroad in white and green; the beaux lounging, conscious of their waists and neckcloths; the busy pushing onward, conscious of their bills; the dogs and coaches-but we must reserve this out-of-door view of the streets for a separate article.

To begin then, where our shopping experience began, with the toy-shop:

Visions of glory, spare our aching sight!

Ye just-breech'd ages, crowd not on our soul!

We still seem to have a lively sense of the smell of that gorgeous red paint, which was on the handle of our first wooden sword! The pewter guard also-how beautifully fretted and like silver did it look! How did we hang it round our shoulder by the proud belt of an old ribbon ;—then feel it well suspended; then draw it out of the sheath, eager to cut down four savage men for ill-using ditto of damsels! An old muff made an excellent grenadier's cap; or one's hat and feather, with the assistance of three surreptitious large pins, became fiercely modern and military. There it is, in that corner of the window -the same identical sword, to all appearance, which kept us awake the first night behind our pillow. We still feel ourselves little boys, while standing in this shop; and for that matter, so we do on other occasions. A field has as much merit in our eyes, and gingerbread almost as much in our mouths, as at that

daisy-plucking and cake-eating period of life. There is the trigger-rattling gun fine of its kind, but not so complete a thing as the sword. Its memories are not so ancient: for Alexander or St. George did not fight with a musket. Neither is it so true a thing; it is not "like life." The trigger is too much like that of a cross-bow; and the pea which it shoots, however hard, produces even to the imaginative faculties of boyhood a humiliating flash of the mock-heroic. It is difficult to fancy a dragon killed with a pea: but the shape and appurtenances of the sword being genuine, the whole sentiment of massacre is as much in its wooden blade, as if it were steel of Damascus. The drum is still more real, though not so heroic.-In the corner opposite are battle-doors and shuttle-cocks, which have their maturer beauties; balls, which possess the additional zest of the danger of breaking people's windows;-ropes, good for swinging and skipping, especially the long ones which others turn for you, while you run in a masterly manner up and down, or skip in one spot with an easy and endless exactitude of toe, looking alternately at their conscious faces ;-blood-allies, with which he possessor of a crisp finger and thumb-knuckle causes the smitten marbles to vanish out of the ring; kites, which must appear to more vital birds a ghastly kind of fowl, with their grim long white faces, no bodies, and endless tails; cricket-bats, manly to handle ;-trap-bats, a genteel inferiority;-swimmingcorks, despicable; horses on wheels, an imposition on the infant public;-rocking horses, too much like Pegasus, ardent yet never getting on ;-Dutch toys, so like life, that they ought to be better;-Jacob's ladders, flapping down one over another their tintinnabulary shutters;-dissected maps, from which the infant statesmen may learn how to dovetail provinces and kingdoms;-paper posture-makers, who hitch up their knees against their shoulder-blades, and dangle their legs like an opera dancer; -Lilliputian plates, dishes, and other household utensils, in which a grand dinner is served up out of half an apple ;-boxes of paints, to color engravings with, always beyond the outline; ditto of bricks, a very sensible and lasting toy, which we except from a grudge we have against the gravity of infant geometrics;-whips, very useful for cutting people's eyes unawares