THE INDICATOR. There he arriving round about doth flie, SPENSER. No. XXXIV.-WEDNESDAY, MAY 31st, 1820. OF THE SIGHT OF SHOPS. THOUGH We are such lovers of the country, we can admire London in some points of view; and among others, for the entertainment to be derived from it's shops. Their variety and brilliancy can hardly fail of attracting the most sluggish attention; and besides reasons of this kind, we can never look at some of them without thinking of the gallant figure they make in the Arabian Nights, with their Bazaars and Bezesteins; where the most beautiful of unknowns goes shopping in a veil, and the most graceful of drapers is taken blindfold to see her. He goes, too smitten at heart to think of the danger of his head; and finds her seated among her slaves, (exquisite themselves, only very inferior), upon which she encourages him to sit near her, and lutes are played; upon which he sighs, and cannot help looking tenderly; upon which she claps her hands, and a charming collation is brought in; upon which they eat, but not much. A dance ensues, and the ocular sympathy is growing tenderer, when an impossible old woman appears, and says that the Sultan is coming. Alas! How often have we been waked up, in the person of the young draper or jeweller, by that ancient objection! How have we received the lady in her veil, through which we saw nothing but her dark eyes and rosy cheeks! How have we sat cross-legged on cushions, hearing or handling the lute, whose sounds faded away like our enamoured eyes! How often have we not lost our hearts and left-hands, like one of the Calenders? Or an eye, like another? Or a head; and resumed it at the end of the story? Or slept (no, not slept) in the Sultan's garden at Schiraz with the Fair Persian? But to return (as well as such enamoured persons can) to our shops. We prefer the country a million times over for walking in generally, especially if we have the friends in it that enjoy it as well; but there are seasons when the very streets may vie with it, If you have been solitary, for instance, for a long time, it is pleasant to get among your fellow-creatures again, even to be jostled and elbowed. If you live in town, and the weather is showery, you may get out in the intervals of rain, and find a quickly dried pavement and a set of brilliant shops very pleasant. Nay, we have known days, even in spring, when a street may out-do the finest aspects of the country; but then it is only when the ladies are abroad, and there happens to be a run of agreeable faces that day. For whether it is fancy or not, or whether certain days do not rather bring out certain people, it is a common remark, that one morning you shall meet a succession of good looks, and another encounter none but the reverse. We do not merely speak of handsome faces; but of those which are charming, or otherwise, whatever be the cause. We suppose the money-takers are all abroad one day, and the heart-takers the other. It is to be observed, that we are not speaking of utility in this article, except indeed of the great utility of agreeableness. A candid leathercutter, therefore will pardon us, if we do not find any thing very attractive in his premises. So will his friend the shoemaker, who is bound to like us rural pedestrians. A stationer too, on obvious accounts, will excuse us for thinking his concern a very dull and baldheaded business. We cannot bear the horribly neat monotony of his shelves, with their loads of virgin paper, their slates and slate-pencils that set one's teeth on edge, their pocket-books (with the exception of the Literary Pocket-Book), and above all, their detestable ruled account-books, which at once remind one of the necessity of writing, and of the impossibility of writing any thing pleasant on such pages. The only agreeable thing, in a stationer's shop, when it has it, is the ornamental work, the card-racks, hand-screens, &c. which remind us of the fair morning fingers that paste and gild such things, and surprise their aunts with presents of flowery boxes. But we grieve to add, that the prints which the stationers furnish for such elegancies, are not in the very highest taste. They are apt to deviate too scrupulously from the originals. Their well-known heads become too anonymous. Their young ladies have casts in the eyes, a little too much on one side even for the sidelong divinities of Mr. Harlowe. STATIONER (to himself). I'll not sell this fellow's Indicator. STAT. Why should I? Not, I hope, for a paltry INDIC. (interrupting him). Oh no, not for a paltry profit, as you say; but because you are a man of taste and impartiality. My observations apply generally to the stationers' shops; but, of course, not to all. All the STATIONERS (severally). 'Tis undoubtedly a clever thing;a very clever, and impartial little publication. The profit upon it, as you say, is not prodigious; but the price is humble. Besides, my wife likes it. INDIC. Does she indeed? Then you must allow me to say that I cannot help liking her. And this reminds me of a penitent observation I have to make; which is, that the letter-paper in your shop forms 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, 66 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, rieu 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: Thérese 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 cellelà, 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 blaspheme 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. Till 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 Saturday 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 We will even, refuse to hear any thing against a gin-shop, till the va rious systems of the moralists and economists are discussed, and the |