seem to sell many things: oils, vinegar, mustard, salt, and soap; honey, bees' wax and emery; black-lead, glue, sponge and packthread; brushes, brooms, blacking, door-mats, tobacco, snuff, pipes and candles. About five hundred years ago, candles were so great a luxury, that splinters of wood, dipped in oil or grease, were used for lights. Why, the thought of reading and writing by the light of a greasy piece of wood, is enough to make one look on a candle with gratitude, to snuff it with double care, and to regard it as a friend. Do you see the oils and colours, the reds and the Blues, the greens and the yellows? West, when he began to paint, pulled hairs from a cat's tail to make him a pencil: but painting brushes are plentiful here. Here are materials for a new school of painters, an absolute academy of Hogarths, Rembrandts, Rafaelles and Guidos; Titians, Teniers, Poussins and Paul Potters. When you next look at a real Vandyck, a Godfrey Kneller, a Murillo, or a Carlo Dolce, you may think more highly of an oil and colour shop. How eloquent might I be about industry, as I look at the bees' wax and the honey-pot; about the British navy, while I gaze on the pitch and the tar-tub; and what strange things in music does that lump of rosin bring to my remembrance! Even now Paganini is before me. I could brighten up in my remarks at the very sight of the ball of lamp cotton, while the spermaceti puts me at once on board a whaler, bound to the icebergs of the Northern Ocean. Now I shall have a treat, for this is the shop of a mercer, and linen and woollen draper. What a magnificent window! It makes me afraid to look in, lest some one should jostle me against the splendid panes of plate-glass. They are of unusual dimensions. How tastefully are the goods arranged! A Cashmerian need not be ashamed of these shawls! A Persian might be proud of those silks! How the muslins and prints wave, like streamers, in the doorway! And then, look at the huge rolls of superfine broad cloth, that remind one of an English squire of the olden time, with his good old dame beside him: "He in English true blue, button'd up to the chin, What a fine mirror is that at the end, yonder, doubling the shop's length to the eye, and multiplying the gas-lights in the evening! With what complaisance and courtesy the well dressed shopmen attend to their customers! How cleverly that youth cleared the counter, by placing his hand upon it and springing over! Do you observe the lady on the right, seated, carelessly examining the different articles before her? that is the twentieth piece of silk the shopman has shown her, yet he is still active and obliging, although she has at present purchased nothing. See here; I would not have passed these plaids and tartans for a crown. Here are the tartans of the Frasers and the McPhersons, the Abercrombies, the M'Farlans, the Camerons, and the Duke of Montrose. The blue dark ground with broad bars of green I remember well, it is the tartan of the 42nd regiment; it prates about the broad-sword. The red ground with large squares, crossed with black, is that of Rob Roy; and the most lively of all, the small squares of red and green, barred with black, is the glowing tartan of the M'Duffs. If the draper's shop possesses many attractions for the fair, the tailor's window is greeted with frequent glances of the manly eye. Let us first notice that large coloured engraving conspicuously placed to display the fashions of the day. There are sketches of gentlemen riding on horseback, or walking with ladies, or exchanging salutations with each other. How very well dressed, and yet how stiff and passionless! Their faces have no more natural expression than the busts in a hairdresser's shop. That velvet waistcoat, or, as they now call it, "vest," is fit for a monarch to wear, and yet the printer's apprentice over the way has his eye upon it; in a week or two we shall see if he wears the same waistcoat that he does now. What heaps of figured silks! what gorgeous patterns! what vivid colours! See, they have attracted the eye of the dashing young fellow passing by. He gazes, hums a tune, and goes on; they are not exactly to his mind. The tailor himself is behind the counter; his face is pale, and he looks unhealthy. How carefully he is examining his ledger! -to some a hateful volume. What long arrears are there! He shuts it up; his countenance seems to have acquired asperity by the perusal. How sharply he speaks to his shopman, who is carelessly folding up some pieces of broad cloth! There is a confusion in the street; a wild bullock is running along, driving the people before him. How quickly the tailor fastens his door! he actually trembles; his shopman, too, appears alarmed; while the butcher on the other side of the street is running out of his shop with a firm countenance: let us notice him, for he, too, is worthy of observation. Well may the butcher live opposite the tailor, for in character they are antipodes. The countenance of the man is jolly and rubicund, with a display of coarse wit and humour in the eye: nothing like unhappiness is to be read there. The blue dress has been worn by the trade from time immemorial. I do not know why: one would think that red would be the more appropriate colour. Mark with what precision the strong armed man uses the cleaver. That stroke went through flesh and bone with a crash unpleasing to the ear. See how adroitly he sheers off that collop with his knife, horridly keen, having just been hastily whetted on the steel at his side. His customer asked for a pound, and he has cut off exactly a pound and a quarter; his knife errs by system. I dare say he could cut a pound within an ounce, if it suited him. With what pleasure that old gentleman seems to handle the sirloin there! The lady with her servant bearing a basket, appears quite at home and at ease amongst the joints: but not so the poor woman in the old red cloak, bargaining for a piece of the coarsest meat; care renders her uneasy, she is no chooser; poverty and hunger are not nice; she thinks only of the price, and is not particular about the quality. I know her well, a deserving creature, with a weakly frame, and a drunken husband. To her "that is afflicted pity should be showed." She has but ninepence; I saw her count it in her hand, though she well knew what it was before. The butcher is not hard with her. See how cheerfully he throws the piece down on the bench as he turns off to another customer, calling out, "Well, take it along with you, Missis." The poor woman is going away with a brighter countenance. Success attend you, master butcher, and may good orders from the rich repay you for your liberality to the poor! What a busy world is this! and how selfishly we spend our time! Whether walking in town or country, where we meet with one rendering a kindness to another, ten are occupied in serving themselves: and, on the average, notwithstanding the shortness of life, where two hundred are busily employed in the affairs of time, scarcely will two be found attending to the things of eternity. Let us put these questions honestly to ourselves. Living in this world, are we looking beyond it? Do we know that this is not our rest? that heaven is the only cure for earthly troubles? and that, above all, Jesus Christ, who died to save sinners, is able to save unto the uttermost all them that come unto God by him. "Time was, is past; thou canst not it recall; A HEAD WIND IN THE ATLANTIC. (From DICKENS's "American Notes.") IT IS the third morning. I am awakened out of my sleep by a dismal shriek from my wife, who demands to know whether there's any danger. I rouse myself, and look out of bed. The water-jug is plunging and leaping like a lively dolphin; all the smaller articles are afloat, except my shoes, which are stranded on a carpet-bag, high and dry, like a couple of coal-barges. Suddenly I see them spring into the air, and behold the looking-glass, which is nailed to the wall, sticking fast upon the ceiling. At the same time the door entirely disappears, and a new one is opened in the floor. Then I begin to comprehend that the state-room is standing on its head. Before it is possible to make any arrangement at all compatible with this novel state of things, the ship rights. Before one can say, "Thank Heaven!" she wrongs again. Before one can cry she is wrong, she seems to have started forward, and to be a creature actively running of its own accord, with broken knees and failing legs, through every variety of hole and pitfall, and stumbling constantly. Before one can so much as wonder, she takes a high leap into the air. Before she has well done that, she takes a deep dive into the water. Before she has gained the surface, she throws a somerset. The instant she is on her legs, she rushes backward. And so she goes on staggering, heaving, wrestling, leaping, diving, jumping, pitching, throbbing, rolling, and rocking; and going through all these movements, sometimes by turns, and sometimes all together; until one feels disposed to roar for mercy. A steward passes. "Steward!" "Sir?" "What is the matter? what do you call this?" "Rather a heavy sea on sir, and a head-wind." A head-wind! Imagine a human face upon the vessel's prow, with fifteen thousand Sampsons in one, bent upon driving her back, and hitting her exactly between the eyes whenever she attempts to advance an inch. Imagine the ship herself, with every pulse and artery of her huge body swoln and bursting under this maltreatment, sworn to go on or die. Imagine the wind howling, the sea roaring, the rain beating: all in furious array against her. Picture the sky both dark and wild, and the clouds, in fearful sympathy with the waves, making another ocean in the air. Add to all this, the clattering on deck and down below; the tread of hurried feet; the loud hoarse shouts of seamen; the gurgling in and out of water through the scuppers; with, every now and then, the striking of a heavy sea upon the planks above; with the deep, dead, heavy sound of thunder heard within a vault;—and there is the head-wind of that January morning. I say nothing of what may be called the domestic noises of the ship such as the breaking of glass and crockery, the tumbling down of stewards, the gambols, overhead, of loose casks and truant dozens of bottled porter, and the very remarkable and far from exhilarating sounds raised in their various state-rooms by the seventy passengers who were too ill to get up to breakfast. I say nothing of them: for although I lay listening to this concert for three or four days, I don't think I heard it for more than a quarter of a minute, at the expiration of which term, I lay down again, excessively sea-sick. The labouring of the ship in the troubled sea on this night I shall never forget. "Will it ever be worse than this?" was a question I had often heard asked, when everything was sliding and bumping about, and when it certainly did seem difficult to comprehend the possibility of anything afloat being more disturbed, without toppling over and going down. But what the agitation of a steam-vessel is, on a bad winter's night in the wild Atlantic, it is impossible for the most vivid imagination to conceive. To say that she is flung down on her side in the waves, with her masts dipping into them, and that, springing up again, she rolls over on the other side, until a heavy sea strikes her with the noise of a hundred great guns, and hurls her back—that she stops, and staggers, and shivers, as though stunned, and then with a violent throbbing at her heart, darts onward like a monster goaded into madness, to be beaten down, and battered, and crushed, and leaped on by the angry |