a very delightful subject of reflection:-not the common letter-paper, you rogue; but the love-letter, the pretty little smooth delicate hotpressed gilt-edged flower-bordered paper, the only fit ground-work for a crow-quill, fair fingers, and golden sand. I suspect, Mr. Stationer, that your shop has as touching memories connected with it, after all, as any in London,

STAT. Why, I should think perhaps it had, Sir. You'll excuse, Sir, that little haste of mine just now?

INDIC. Oh, by all means: and you must excuse mine; for I have many shops to call at. My compliments, if you please, to your wife. By the bye, you ought to know, if you happen not to know, it already, that it was for such paper as that which I have been mentioning that Rousseau describes himself as writing the two first books of his Heloise, in a state of unspeakable enjoyment. The paper was of the finest gilt; the sand, to dry the ink, azure and silver; and he had blue ribbon to stitch the sheets together; "thinking," he says, "nothing too gallant, nothing too darlingly delicate, for the charming girls, whom I was doating upon like another Pygmalion*." This was in the little sylvan island of Montmorency; with nothing but silence about him; and the lady, who had given him his Hermitage, sending him billets, and portraits, and flannel under-petticoats.

STAT. Flannel under-petticoats!

INDIC. Yes, to make under-waistcoats. It was winter timet.

But there love-matters are again interfering with the shop. Adieu, Mr. Stationer. We must now shock you, though still, we trust, not unpardonably, by objecting to your neighbour the hatter. We really can see nothing in a hatter's shop, but the hats; and the reader is acquainted with our pique against them. The beaver is a curious ani

* "Content d'avoir grossierement esquissé mon plan, je revins aux situations de détail que j'avois tracées, et de l'arrangement que le jeur donnai résulterent les deux premieres parties de la Julie, que je fis et mis au net durant cet hiver avec un plaisir inexprimable, employant pour cela le plus beau papier doré, de la poudre d'azur et d'argent pour sécher l'écriture, de la nompareille bleue coudrer mes cahiers; enfin ne trouvant rien d'assez galant, rien d'assez mignon, pour les charmantes filles dont je raffolois comme un autre Pigmalion." Compare these concluding words, which we did not remember at the time, with the introductory observations on the article headed Rousseau's Pygmalion.

This sort of present touched our Genevese philosopher more than the Hermitage itself, or indeed, according to his own account, more than any thing which the lady in question ever sent him; and she had all a lover's tendency to give. "Un jour," says he, "qu'il geloit très-fort, en ouvrant un paquet qu'elle m'envoyoit de plusieurs commissions dont elle s'étoit chargée, j'y trouvai un petit jupon de dessous de flanelle d'Angleterre, qu'elle me marquoit avoir porté, et dont elle vouloit que je fisse uu gilet. Ce soin, plus qu'amical, me parut si tendre, comme si elle se fut dépouillée pour me vêtir, que dans mon émotion, je baisai vingt fois en pleurant le billet et jupon; Therese me croyoit devenu fou. Il est singulier que de toutes les marques d'amitié que Madame D- -y m'a prodiguées, aucun ne m'a jamais touché comme cellela, et que même depuis notre rupture, je n'y ai jamais repensé sans attendrissement. J'ai long-temps conserve son petit billet, et je l'aurois encore, s'il n'eût eu le sort de mes autres billets du même temps." What should have hindered him, even according to his own story, from keeping both the billet and the lady's regards? But his capricious temperament was always leading him to play the fool, with those whom he had enchanted by being the genius.

mal; but not entertaining enough, of itself, to make a window full of those very requisite nuisances an agreeable spectacle. It is true, a hatter, like some other tradesmen, may be pleasanter himself, by reason of the adversity of his situation. We cannot say more for the cruel-shop next door,-a name justly provocative of a pun. It is customary however to have sign-paintings of Adam and Eve at these places; which is some relief to the monotony of the windows; only they remind us but too well of these cruel necessities to which they brought us. The baker's next ensuing is a very dull shop; much inferior to the gingerbread baker's, whose parliament we used to munch at school, wiping away the crumbs as they fell upon our Mysteries of Udolpho. The tailor's makes one as melancholy to look at it, as the sedentary persons within. The hosier's is worse; particularly if it has a Golden Leg over it; for that precious limb is certainly not symbolical of the weaver's. The windows, half board and half dusty glass, which abound in the city, can scarcely be turned to a purpose of amusement, even by the most attic of dry salters. We own we have half a longing to break them, and let in the light of nature upon their recesses; whether they belong to those more piquant gentlemen, or to bankers, or any other high and wholesale personages. A light in one of these windows at nine o'clock is, to us, one of the very dismallest reflections on humanity. We wish we could say something for a tallow-chandler's, because every body abuses it: but we cannot. It must bear it's fate like the man. A good deal might be said in behalf of candle-light; but in passing from shop to shop, the variety is so great, that the imagination has not time to dwell on any one in particular. The ideas they suggest must be obvious and on the surface. A grocer's and tea-dealer's is a good thing. It fills the mind instantly with a variety of pleasant tastes, as the ladies in Italy on certain holidays pelt the gentlemen with sweetmeats. An undertaker's is as great a baulk to one's spirits, as a loose stone to one's foot. It gives one a deadly jerk. But it is refreshing upon the whole to see the inhabitant looking carelessly out of doors, or hammering while humming a tune; for why should he die a death at every fresh order for a coffin? An undertaker walking merrily drunk by the side of a hearse is a horrid object; but an undertaker singing and hammering in his shop is only rapping death himself on the knuckles. The dead are not there; the altered fellow-creature is not there; but only the living man, and the abstract idea of death; and he may defy that as much as he pleases. An apothecary's is the more deadly thing of the two; for the coffin may be made for a good old age, but the draught and the drug are for the sickly. An apothecary's looks well however at night-time, on account of the coloured glasses. It is curious to see two or three people talking together in the light of one of them, and looking profoundly blue, There are two good things in an Italian warehouse, it's name and it's olives; but it is chiefly built up of gout. Nothing can be got out of a brazier's windows, except by a thief: but we understand it is a good place to live at for those who cannot procure water-falls. A music shop with it's windows full of title-pages, is

provokingly insipid to look at, considering the quantity of slumbering enchantment inside, which only wants waking. A bookseller's is interesting, especially if the books are very old or very new, and have frontispieces. But let no author, with or without money in his pocket, trust himself in the inside, unless like the bookseller, he has too much at home. An author is like a baker; it is for him to make the sweets, and others to buy and enjoy them. And yet not so. Let us not blas pheme the "divinity that stirs within us." The old comparison of the bee is better; for even if his toil at last is his destruction, and he is killed in order to be plundered, he has had the range of nature before he dies, His has been the summer air, and the sunshine, and the flowers; and gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes have been upon him. Let others eat his honey that please, so that he has had his morsel and his song. A book-stall is better for an author than a regular shop; for the books are cheaper, the choice often better and more ancient; and he may look at them, and move on, without the horrors of not buying any thing; unless indeed the master or mistress stands looking at him from the door; which is a vile practice. It is necessary, we suppose, to guard against pilferers; but then ought not a stall-keeper, of any perception, to know one of us real magnanimous spoilers of our gloves from a sordid thief? A tavern and coffee-house is a pleasant sight, from it's sociality; not to mention-the illustrious club memories of the times of Shakspeare and the Tatlers. The rural transparencies, however, which they have in their windows, with all our liking of the subject, would perhaps be better in any others; for tavern-sociality is a town-thing, and should be content with town ideas. A landscape in the window makes us long to change it at once for a rural inn; to have a rosy-faced damsel attending us, instead of a sharp and serious waiter; and to catch, in the intervals of chat, the sound of a rookery instead of cookery. We confess that the commonest public-house in town is not such an eyesore to us, as it is with some. It may not be very genteel, but neither is every thing that is rich. There may be a little too much drinking and roaring going on in the middle of the week; but what, in the mean time, are pride, and avarice, and all the unsocial vices about? Before we object to public-houses, and above all to their Saturday evening recreations, we must alter the systems that make them a necessary comfort to the poor and laborious. Fill then, in spite of the vulgar part of the polite, we shall have an esteem for the Devil and the Bag o' Nails; and like to hear, as we go along on Săturday night, the applauding knocks on the table that follow the song of Lovely Nan," or "Brave Captain Death," or "Tobacco is an Indian Weed," or "Why, Soldiers, why," or "Says Plato, why should man be vain," or that judicious and unanswerable ditty commencing

Now what can man more desire
Nor sitting by a sea-coal fire;
And on his knees, &c.

We will even refuse to hear any thing against a gin-shop, till the various systems of the moralists and economists are discussed, and the

virtuous leave off making prostitutes and drinking old port. In the mean time, we give up to any body's dislike the butcher's and fishmonger's, with their blood-dropping sheep and their crimped cod. And yet see how things go by comparison. We remember in our boyhood, when a lady from the West Indies, of a very delicate and highbred nature, could find nothing about our streets that more excited her admiration, than the butchers' shops. She had no notion, from what she had seen in her own country, that so ugly a business could be carried on with so much neatness, and become actually passable. An open potato-shop is a dull, bleak-looking place, except in the height of summer, A cheesemonger's is then at it's height of annoyance, unless you see a paviour 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 dead-bodied business, with it's birds and their lax necks. We dislike to see a bird any where but in the open air, alive, and quick. Of all creatures, restraint and death become it's winged vivacity the least. For the same reason we hate aviaries. Dog-shops are tolerable. A cookshop does not mingle the agreeable with the useful. We hate it's panes with Ham and Beef scratched upon them in white letters. An ivory-turner's is pleasant, with it's red and white chessmen, and little big-headed Indians on elephants. So is a toy-shop, with it's endless delights for children. A coach-maker's is not disagreeable if you can see the painting and pannels. An umbrella-shop only reminds one of a rainy day, unless it is a shop for sticks also, which, as we showed last week, are meritorious articles. The curiosity-shop is sometimes very amusing, with it's mandarins, stuffed birds, odd old carved faces, and a variety of things as indescribable as bits of dreams. The greengrocer carries his recommendation in his epithet. The hair-dressers are also interesting, as far as their hair goes, but not as their heads; always bearing in mind that we mean the heads in their windows. One of the shops we like least is an angling repository, with it's 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 of 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 sadler'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 splendours of a fairy palace. We like a blacksmith's for the sturdy looks and thumpings of the men, the swarthy colour, 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 chimnies. We also greatly admire a wharf, with it's 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 siImilar reasons, the crabbedest old lane has it's merits in our eyes, if there is a sail-maker's in it, or a boat-builder'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 print-seller's pleases us most. We would rather pay a shilling to Mr. Colnaghi of Cockspur-street, or Mr. Molteno of Pall-mall, to look at his 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. We think they would do their trade more good if they hung their windows with a greater number of flowers, ticketing some of them with their names and prices, and announcing crowns and wreaths for hanging up in rooms as well as wearing on the head. A dress warehouse is sometimes really worth stopping at, for it's flowered draperies and richly coloured 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 satisfaction 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. It is on such occasions, we pre sume, that snuff-takers delight to solace themselves with a pinch of Thirty-seven; and we accordingly do so in imagination at our friend Gliddon's in Tavistock-street, who is a higher kind of Lilly to the INDICATOR, Our papers lying among the piquant snuffs, as those of our illustrious predecessor The Tatler did among Mr. Lilly's perfumes at the corner of Beaufort-buildings. Since the peace with France, the shops of our tobacconists have become as amusing as print-shops; though not always, it must be confessed, in a style of delicacy becoming their enamoured boxes. At our friend's in Tavistock-street every thing is managed in a way equally delicate and cordial; and while the leisurely man of taste buys his Paris or his Indicator, the busier one may learn how to set up his gas-light in good classical style, and both