when vanity, ambition, or emulation is concerned in their production. The above, however, is a mere glimpse at an almost inexhaustible record, from which we may hereafter glean another chapter. THE ROMANCE OF AN AUTHORESS'S CHILDHOOD. I SHALL here relate a simple story, not so much to show the heart of a young child, as those little quaint pictures of life and nature in which a child's heart found faith and strength to teach anew, in a story divested of all its intermingled pain, that the very strength acquired by us through circumstance, does but increase the debt of usefulness we owe to society; and that our faculties, our opportunities, and our industry, bind us only the more to turn them to account by increasing the happiness of those we may influence. I was born in the west of England, and am an only daughter. The circumstances of my birth were those of tribulation and sorrow-a time of commercial distress, that pressed heavily upon the middle classes of society; the failure of my father's only brother, a merchant till then of prosperous fortunes, who had held in his hands the savings of my father's more fortunate and early years; and my father's entrance upon a new scene of professional labour, with all its cares and anxieties. I was sickly from my birth, but I had a tender nurse in my eldest brother. He taught me to walk, to talk; even before I could understand him, he used to place me in a corner and tell me tales. But before this time, we had left the town where I was born, for another in an adjacent county, and, for a season, more prosperous events had come about. I slept in a little closet adjoining my brothers' room, and could hear them beginning to talk at break of day. I knew the eldest was entertaining the others with some long story, and I used to sit down outside their room door and hear what I could. There were two standard tales, the Black Dwarf, and Robinson Crusoe; but the latter was the favourite. When it was put up to vote which tale should be told, it was always 'Robinson Crusoe, and don't forget the footstep in the sand.' Morning after morning this same thing was said; yet when I knew the footstep in the sand' was coming, I grew breathless, and would creep nearer and nearer the door. The 'footstep' was an incident that never could grow old. At length I was found one morning. From that time I became one of the licensed auditory. I believe it was upon a little island in the Severn that I first learned to read. My spelling-book was a thumbed copy of Cowley, not trimly decked in morocco, but smelling of the fresh-plucked grass and oozy trout, with here and there, tucked between the leaves, a hackle, or a wing of some bright-coloured bird. Often during the heat of the mid-day sun, whilst my brother prepared his Greek or Latin lesson for the next school-day, I, too, had some task to learn-generally a verse of poetry -till, soothed by the sound of the falling waters, I would nestle to his side, and sink into the sleep of childhood. One of these noonday lessons was, I well remember, a little hymn by Kirke White, beginning, When marshalled on the nightly plains;' another, Wordsworth's 'We are seven.' I was thus, as it were, insensibly taught to read and love poetry together. From such a summer's life by stream, and in the far-off woods, lessons from the great book of nature were learnt and understood. Birds, fishes, flowers, the change of the seasons, the colour of the waters, the tints of the sky, the hue of the woodlands, the clustering fruits of autumn, were so many glorious things, that in their freshness and beauty spoke to the child of the love and divinity of God. In these rambles we often met with adventure and characters. Sometimes in the braken, where no human foot seemed near, we would find some worthy brother of the angle. There seems a kind of freemasonry among the craft. The little courtesy of a borrowed line or float would often lead to a conversation that might have delighted Cotton or his worthy father Walton. From habit, I was quite expert at judging the difference between a May fly or a June fly, a gnat that suited the shallow ford, or a worm for the deep waters. Many a thank these worthy brothers of the angle would bestow on me; and I still remember that tinted dragon-fly, and that passage of Cowley, which brought me kind words from one illustrious as a philosopher. To the dialogues that often arose from these fishing adventures, I was always a silent listener, till the moon, rising in the heavens, would cast upon the trickling waters its silver light, or the nightingale, raising its cicar notes in the upland coppice, would warn us that home was far away. Surely in the glory of such an hour, when peace had fallen upon the earth, and nature herself seemed to worship the great Spirit of the universe, the heart of the young child must have prayed too. The visible presence of thanksgiving in the rippling stream and nightingale's voice, might well make father Walton sing, 'Lord, what music hast thou prepared for thy saints in heaven, when thou affordest men such music upon earth!' Old water-mills, with dripping slimy wheel, the foaming waters in the mill-dam, the gutted cottage standing half-way in the stream, the coppice lane, the silent wood, the hewn timber, or the loaded wain, were to me so many things of natural delight! The country in which we lived is one of pre-eminent beauty of scenery. Its grand features are mountain and woodland. The 'sedgy' Severn flows swiftly through it, skirting the town in which we lived, and flowing onward through vales and pastures as silent and lonely as the untrodden valleys of the far-west. All the hours my brother could spare from school were devoted to angling. He was an indefatigable fly fisher. I My brother and I several times narrowly escaped with was mostly his companion in his long rambles; for he our lives, by fording the river at flood times. Once by would carry me miles in his arms, with his creel swung being pursued by an infuriated bull. Roaring and pawacross his back. No ford was too deep to wade, no rocking the earth, it had pursued us across several fields, from amidst the waters too inaccessible, no little island too overshadoyed for our retreat. Solitude and silence became accustomed things; for I have sat whole hours watching the fly upon the dancing waters, only pressing my brother's hand, or looking up into his face, when it would sink far down the stream, and drawing the line swiftly from the reel, make me sure that another fish was ready for the basket. The newly-taken fish often made us our dinner, broiled in true fisherman style across a fire made from the dried sticks shaken by the winter's | winds from the very tree that then afforded us shade from the summer's sun. A little ale, from such a road-side inn as Nasmyth painted, was our drink, or a cup of milk from some farm upon the uplands. Bright days were these: at the distance of years the heart grows young again, and the spirit gains an accession of elasticity and joyousness, by the mere memory of that green and unforgotten past. a shallow rivulet by which we had been sitting. My brother flung aside his rod and creel, and seizing me in his arms, fled with naked feet (for he had been wading) for his life. The bull gained upon us field by field, till his very horns were within a foot of us, when my brother, still holding me tightly, plunged at one bound from the steep bank into the deep waters below, and gained in safety the other side of the river. Amongst the many that my father's profession made him acquainted with, was a family with whom I became a favourite. There were a father and mother, a brother and two sisters. Their happy home, their love and union, their wise and rational piety, are remembered by me to this hour. The son was a large bookseller, the father agent for the publishing house of Childs of Bungay. In this happy home of theirs six days of the week were often spent. As soon as I could read, I used to creep into the shop, and carrying with me the old lady's footstool, find a quiet unseen corner, where, with a lapful of books, the hours passed by unregarded. As every book was found replaced, I was privileged and allowed to pick and choose at will. My little unseen corner became a sacred spot, from which no inducement of pleasure could win me. At night, there was the cheerfullest hearth to sit by I ever knew. The high-piled fire roared merrily up the quaint wide chimney, and twinkling with ruddy glow across the polished floor, took even from the oaken press and ancient chairs their look of dark-brown age. The supper would be spread, the sisters side by side, the mother in her ancient chair, the father gravely meditating over his evening pipe, whilst within the glow of the hearth stood the tankard of winter ale, its creamy top half hidden by the crisp brown toast. Then after supper would come dropping in, perhaps, the minister, or some grave man, who had been out upon the hills with monthly copies of devout books and holy bibles, who, travel-worn, had yet come to give first greeting to the master.' The scatterer of holy Bunyans, large-typed Doddridges, or Divine Meditations, never lapsed into a smile, but ever bore about with him the conscious dignity of his calling: wisely, too, and not unworthily. For the dissemination of a truth is next to its creation; and the apostle of knowledge, like the apostle of old, bore not the burden of truth without consciousness of its holiness. In a distant part of the house was a very large and ancient room, filled all round from the floor to the ceiling with the grave literature I have spoken of. At times I took my little stool there. I know not how it was, but in that room I rather thought than read, going round the walls, counting the many shelves, and wondering how, and when, and why, men had written so much. I must now speak of my father; for, as I grew up, I became his companion. I scarcely ever went to school, but rather picked up the rudiments of learning from overhearing my brothers at their lessons, and from an unceasing and unchecked love of reading. To modify a natural feebleness of body, I enjoyed much out-door exercise, and became the chosen companion of my father in many rambles about the country during his spare professional hours. Sometimes from home, sometimes from the houses of country friends, we would visit particular spots remarkable for their scenery, or for the historical or antiquarian events associated with them. All our walks had a pursuit annexed to them. Perhaps a book in the vestry of some ancient church among the hills, perhaps some spot alluded to in Tacitus or Cæsar, or some legend in a county manuscript, might be the object of attraction. One summer we visited Offa's Dyke, not on one day, but on many, seeing and tracing it from many points. This dyke was the boundary of the great Mercian kingdom on its western side. It extended from Flintshire into Herefordshire, and was a defence against the incursions of the Welsh into the kingdom of the Saxon heptarchy. The parts which are yet entire consist of a trench and mound, carried over hills and through almost inaccessible morasses.* The ditch is invariably on the Welsh side; and in many places it yet serves as a boundary line. The mound is seen stretching for miles across the border hills. Many an evening on its lofty height I have sat and listened to its history and origin. With the illimitable distance stretched out to view, the river glinting across the plains like silver threads, the woodlands casting broad shadows over the green-clad valleys, whilst far away the sinking sun shed its last glory on the mountain tops, with no sound of human voice, I have sat and listened till my heart has grown courageous, and my hand strong, as if, in truth, I were the daughter of ancient border chieftain. Another summer, when I had grown older, we made excursions to Wroxeter, now a mean village, but once the site of Uriconium, the celebrated western city of the Romans during their dominion in Britain. This * Hartshorn's Salopia Antiqua. was once so extensive, that it covered from three to four hundred acres.* No vestige of it is now left, except the ruins of a gigantic wall, some twenty yards in length. But the buried relics of the city were many. Often has the ploughshare thrown out into the darkened furrows coins, bones, fragments of pottery, and pieces of glass, after their burial of sixteen or seventeen hundred years. Over the streets of this once great city, where temples had stood, where human ambition and human care had toiled, rich harvests of wheat now grow, richer and more luxuriant than common harvests, because fed by the very ashes of the buried city from household hearths, market-places, sepulchres, and altars. From the distant uplands we have in spring-time traced the outlines of the buried city by the darker fallow and the deeper green of the springing wheat or grass. Old Roman encampments were often found. Passing through the ferny brake, crushing the young primrose or violet, we would toil up the steep ascent, and resting at last in the inner vallum, drop pebbles down the well, that, still entire, with an old mountain-ash now growing from its side, once supplied the Roman camp with water. Upon recovering from a severe illness when I was about eight years of age, I was sent for change of air to a relation's in a distant part of England. Every comfort that money or the providing hand of love could procure, was heaped upon me; and, under the care of a friend, I left home one fine morning in May. I spent a whole week with this friend in London, at the house of a city merchant in Crutched Friars. I well remember the old, gloomy, oak-panelled rooms, with staircases and galleries wide enough to have held a coach-and-six. The very number of the stairs, the very patterns of the carpets, the dusty mirrors, the figures on the old Dutch clock in the gallery, are as fresh before me as if I had seen them yesterday. I was received by my relations with an overwhelming show of kindness, which, as a prodigy, lasted for a whole week. At the end of that time things changed; and the Eden that was to be, proved a wilderness of bitterness. I was weak in health and emaciated in body. At the end of the one week I was stripped of what I wore and what I brought, starved, beaten, and driven from the house, from early dawn till night, to some fields in the rear of the house, with nothing but a hollow pit of sand to hide myself in, or the peas or carrots from the field for food. I, too, who had been reared with all a father's love, who had thoughts so far beyond those who oppressed me, that, hiding them in my own heart, secretly and proudly, like precious jewels, I laughed to myself, and said, "These ye cannot touch, oppress as ye best may.' I sometimes look back upon those eleven dreary months, and wonder how I lived: yet what were they to what the future was to be! It was soon found out that I was clever at the needle. From thenceforth many days, from early dawn till night, were passed at it, executing narrow embroidery; so that when I did get a day in the fields or the barren heath beyond, it was a coveted luxury. When I would creep back at night, I generally found my day's food thrust upon the step of the staircase; for I was forbidden to return to the house within stated hours. With this I would steal to the garret where I slept. It was the topmost room in the house, with a shelving roof, a narrow window, partly without glass, an old oaken bedstead, a wide chest, and one chair. Often, as I lay sleepless, a large bat, which, during the day, had lodged in the worm-eaten curtains of the bed, would crawl forth, and whizzing past to the window, which it knew would never shut, leave me in a state of terror it were impossible to describe. Sometimes, when the moon was bright, and the night fine, I would draw the chair to the window, where, leaning out upon the roof, I could watch the stars, to wonder perhaps why misery or oppression was on earth, when all above in heaven bespoke peace and uniformity. What wonder was it, then, that I thought, and afterwards wrote, what I then conceived to be poetry? It was a secret which, for years after, I guarded as my life. But I must tell upon what I wrote. Adjoining to the house where I lived were a Catholic chapel and some cottages, where the officiating priests dwelt. An extensive garden, belonging to the priests, ran parallel for a considerable way to the fields I frequented, and was divided only by a ditch and hedge. Everything, to one so solitary, was soon a matter of observance. I found that, at certain hours of the day, an aged priest came to a little green plot that, shaded in by bushy shrubs, lay at the extremity of the garden nearest the heath. This place was a sodded hollow, in which was a sun-dial, and beds of the rarest carnations. To these the old man attended with assiduous care, watering and pruning, propping and pressing up their bursting flowers with round pieces of card and paper. As these flowers died, the card or paper was taken off. That they might not litter this little dainty plot of ground, they were placed in a corner of the rustic seat upon which the priest daily sat to read. When he had tended his flowers, he usually read a book he brought, mostly aloud, and always in the Latin tongue. I have since thought that that old man might have written on his sun-dial what the monk of old did, Horas non numero nisi serenas-‘We only count the hours that are serene.' One day, after a storm of wind, I found the pile of card and paper scattered and blown by the wind over the thick hawthorn fence. These little papers seemed like a providential gift. I gathered them, and carefully concealed them in my bosom. That night, in the bright moonlight, with the window-ledge for my table, and a burnt skewer for my pen, I first wrote down my thoughts. My nights were no longer unhappy, or the hours long. The moon was to me like the face of a dear friend in the far-heavens. How to hide these papers became a matter of grave thought. If they were found, I should be beaten; if I hid them on the heath or in the fields, the rain might destroy them: my room contained no hiding-place. At length I found the strangest one in the world: no comic romance could have devised a stranger: it was a worm-eaten hollow in the leg of the bedstead. To me it was the rarest cabinet ever devised; for it safely held all my worldly trea sures. The life I led is too terrible to describe. No Oliver Twist in a workhouse had a worse. I was without friends, without sympathy, without books. I knew my heart was breaking. At length, without warning, one bitter day in March I was hurried to the nearest town, and on to a coach. With a begging letter and half-acrown I commenced my journey of three hundred miles. My half-crown proved to me an inexpressible torment; my whole thoughts were how to divide it. Every time I saw a guard or coachman dismount, I thought of the necessary shilling. To do the best I could, I changed it for five sixpences: when the coach stopped in the night, the coachman came for his gratuity; I put a sixpence into his hand, and burst into tears. 'I am very poor,' I said; ''tis all I can give.' He pressed back the sixpence, held up a lantern to my face, left me, and returned in five minutes with a steaming glass of weak brandy and water, and a plate of sandwiches. I had had no food since early morning. He made me eat and drink, thrust the remnant of the sandwiches into my lap, bade me a cheerful good night, and shouting out to the guard, 'I say, Joe, be good to this little 'un, as the Lord loves you,' disappeared within the tavern door. About three o'clock in a drizzling March morning the coach reached the metropolis; I alighted, and had to sit upon my box on the pavement in Oxford Street, whilst the merits of the letter I carried were discussed within the coach-office. At last, after a weary time, I was placed in a hackney-coach with an intoxicated man; my terror was indescribable. One of my sixpences was called for to pay a turnpike gate. At length the western coach was overtaken, and my journey continued. I had for my companion an aged Jew. As dawn broke, he viewed me very attentively, and vowing that I was like his dead daughter Rachel, invited me to partake of his breakfast, consisting of hard eggs and brown bread. This I declined; but I was an attentive listener to his story-as pathetic, if not so poetical, as that of Jephtha's daughter. The early morning of another day found me in a large town some few miles from my own. One of my memorable shillings had been divided between two obliging coachmen. I sat with the last in my hand upon a settle within the bar of the inn where the coach stopped. The landlord came to ask me if I would not have breakfast? I resolutely said no. I had then a habit, as I have now, of unconsciously talking aloud. I debated the expenditure of the shilling; I was overheard; the fat landlord reappeared; he took me by the hand, led me to his own breakfast-table, watched whilst the landlady sweetened my tea well, told me some long story about his own boyish travels, and considered my outspoken comment upon the shilling as an amazing joke. I reached the end of my journey with that shilling unbroken. They did not know me when I reached home. My father wept over me like a child-I was so altered-so broken-hearted. I became insensible from excess of joy. If, like the ancient king, I counted up the number of my happy days, that day of return would be one of them. THE STREETS OF LONDON. NO. I.-MONMOUTH STREET. AMONG the many streets of London that have a peculiar character, and are inhabited by a peculiar people, one of the most remarkable in all respects is Monmouth Street. It is a somewhat broad thoroughfare, taking a semicircular bend from the top of High Street, St Giles's, south-west towards the intricate regions of Seven Dials on the one side, and of Soho on the other. It is the main thoroughfare of that crowded district, and is crowded and wretched enough in itself; but different in the kind of crowd, and the degree and description of wretchedness, from all that surrounds it. The most careless observer cannot enter it without being struck by the singularity of its appearance. It abounds with dealers in second-hand articles, chiefly of apparel, and is the grand entrepôt for old clothes for the west end, just as Petticoat Lane and Rag Fair are for the eastern quarters of the metropolis. The stranger, on passing through it, is struck with the unhealthiness depicted on the pallid faces of the children, with which it absolutely teems; and with the strange disagreeable musty smell that arises from its overcrowded cellars, and pervades the houses to the very chimney-pots. To those who do know it, and who wish to study human life and character, there is no spot in the whole metropolis that offers a more fruitful subject for observation. It takes its name from the unfortunate son of Charles II., who was executed for rebellion in the year 1685. Soho Square, in the immediate vicinity, which was built about the same time, was originally called Monmouth Square, in honour of the same personage; but after his execution, its name was changed to that which it now bears. The street retains its first appellation. At that period the neighbourhood was fashionable; but fashion gradually travelled to the west and north, to Gerrard Street and Dean Street, and then upwards to Tyburn; and the whole place, south and east of Soho Square, about eighty or ninety years ago, was left to the lowest of the population of London. At what time the Jews first took possession of Monmouth Street is not exactly known. Gay, in his amusing poem of 'Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London,' mentions Monmouth Street as famous for old suits' in the year 1712; so that generation after generation of the same race of people, and the same peculiar class of traders, have continued, through all the chances and changes of time and fashion, to make it their dwelling-place. It numbers about fifty houses on each side of the way; and on the right-hand side, on entering from High Street, forty-five at least out of the fifty are shops occupied by dealers in old clothes, chiefly Jews; the remainder being chandlers' shops, to supply the hourly wants of the inhabitants. The other side is not quite so full of Jews; but at least one-half of the shops even there are occupied by them, and the other half by dealers in the cast-off apparel of ladies. Their wares are spread out to the best advantage, and cover the windows to such a degree, that very little light can penetrate into the shops. The doors are also half blocked up by strings of garments, which dangle in the impure atmosphere, and shut out by that inlet also the light which might otherwise enter. In fact, the whole stock in trade of one of these shops is sometimes displayed in front of it; for when you enter, little else is to be seen besides a deal counter, and a beggarly account of empty shelves. Jews have for the most part this striking peculiarity-they love not only to do business, but to enjoy pleasure as much as possible out of doors. Enter the street when the tide of business has most strongly set in, and you will be sure to see before some of the shops the process of a bargain and sale enacted in its minutest details. The actors in the scene are usually the shopkeeper as buyer, and one of his peripatetic brethren-of whom so many perambulate the streets with long bags and incessant inquiries after 'Old Clo-as vender. Observe the diamond cut diamond' fashion with which the negotiation is carried on- When Jew meets Jew, then comes the tug of war.' It is curious to witness the searching scrutiny with which the purchaser examines the garment. It is a coat. First of all, it is held in outstretched arms against the light, that any transparencies in the texture may be detected in the back and skirts. Then the sleeves are turned up, and the elbows carefully examined as to the number of threads which wear has rendered visible, or the quantity of grease they have imbibed-sure indices of the amount of service the garment Then comes the important question of price, concerning which a warm discussion takes place. Again the coat is examined, the number of thin' places and the quantity of grease about the collar and cuffs carefully estimated. Presently the storm subsides; the coat and a half-crown or two change owners, and the parties separate. has seen. In a day or two that same coat makes its appearance amongst the rest of the stock in front of the shop, and none but an experienced hand would know it again. When it was bought, it was rusty, dirty, and threadbare; now it is to be sold, it is glossy, black, and with a very respectable appearance of nap. It has in fact undergone a mysterious process called 'duffing.' By the aid of soap and turpentine the grease has been removed; a wire clothes-brush has scratched up a nap from the bare threads, whilst a sort of pigment, which partakes partly of the nature of dye, partly of that of blacking, has been rubbed into it; and,' exclaims the Jew as he hangs it up exultingly for sale, 'who's to tell it from a new one?' man steps up beside the stranger, and in a confidential manner whispers into his ear, 'Have you anything to sell, sir?' This sort of importunity is not, however, nearly so characteristic of Monmouth Street as of the more eastern depôts of cast-off garments near the Strand or Whitechapel. The truth is, Monmouth Street has a spice of aristocracy attached to it. It is one of the principal media by which the cast-off clothes of the nobility reach, through their servants and valets, the middle and poorer classes. In fact, fortunes have been made in Monmouth Street; its denizens, therefore, are in some small degree more civilised than their brethren of the east. While it is a rule in Monmouth Street that the old-clothes dealers have the shops, and all the houses above them, the cellars are inhabited by a different race. They are almost invariably appropriated to the sale of old boots and shoes; and the passenger who walks along, and looks down as he goes, will see at the foot of every dirty stair leading from the street an industrious cobbler busily at work. Upon one side up the stairs, boots and shoes of all ages and sizes, rubbed thickly over with wax to hide their manifold deficiencies, are neatly arranged, while the other side is set apart for apples or sweetmeats, or now and then for cheap crockery, to be exchanged for old shoes with those who come to sell and not to buy. These wretched cellars, which receive no other light than the feeble glimmer that penetrates down the stair, are let at the enormous rentals of four, five, or six shillings a-week, unfurnished; and in these a family of eight or ten persons are cooped up, working, eating, and sleeping within the same dark, damp, unwholesome walls. If there is a father to the family, he is generally a cobbler, while the mother plies the mangle; and so 'cribbed and confined' are they of necessity, that the mangle not unfrequently does service for a table at dinner-time, and is made a bed for the younger branches of the family at night. Fresh air there is little or none. The floor is mostly of earth; and when it is not, the dirt has been known to accumulate until it became three inches thick upon the boards; and the whole so damp, that mushrooms have grown in the corners, and mosses in every scanty hole that was not trodden upon by the feet of its superabundant inhabitants. Any one who enters must stoop and walk backwards, like one who descends into the hold of a ship; and if he be not well acquainted with the ways of the place, he runs a risk of overthrowing some hundreds of pairs of old shoes, and-worse mishap still-as many pieces of crockery. Besides these, however, Monmouth Street has its more extensive firms in the second-hand boot and shoe line. There are several respectable people who, under pretence of corns and bunions, declare they cannot wear new leather, because it draws the feet. These are the customers of the larger shops. Amongst the above-ground depôts, both for boots and clothes, there are some proprietors well known for their wealth, and who are talked respectfully of in the city' the capital they have accumulated in doctoring up boots, they largely employ in discounting bills. The trade in cast-off ladies' clothes, largely carried on in Monmouth Street, is a mysterious subject, which, it must be honestly confessed, we are unable to fathom. What becomes of the faded satin gowns and crushed bonnets displayed at the door-posts; who may be the consumers of the second-hand artificial flowers, the mock With baits of this kind, the Monmouth Street shop-jewellery, the cast-off hair-combs, the dilapidated fans, keepers have no mean power in attracting and fixing the fancies of many persons who have little to spare for the adornment of the outward man. It is a maxim with the fraternity, that whoever appears in the street is a customer; or if not, that he ought to be. Consequently, nothing is wanting on their part to draw him into a transaction.' They pace up and down before their shops, and inquire of every passenger if he wants anything in their way? The answer is generally in the negative: whereupon the adroit trades the broken feathers, the mended kid gloves, the darned lace, and the dirty packs of cards, which are displayed in the windows-we are at a loss to conjecture. The only clue to the mystery which we know of, is presented in the costume of the ladies who perform the fashionable characters at the minor theatres. Monmouth Street puts on its best face on the Jews' and Christians' Sabbaths. The Hebrews, as we before hinted, have a great liking for the open air; consequently, on fine holiday evenings, some of them are to be seen seated in chairs on the pavement before their shops, the men smoking pipes, and the women joining in moderate potations of porter; a pewter quart of which stands just inside the door on a little round table. Children are playing about. The whole group is well, perhaps elegantly dressed. Most of the Monmouth Street denizens are Jews, and that race are remarkably fond of fine clothes, disdaining shabby or second-hand articles for their own holiday use, as they love them for the sake of the profits' at other times. nor. anchor, the sign adopted by Raphelengius of Leyden; an anchor, with a dolphin twisted round it, was the symbol of the Mavutti of Venice and Rome. The Stephenses of Paris and Geneva put forth the olive-tree; and the Elzevirs of Amsterdam adopted the same symbol. The signs of the Zodiac were likewise appropriated as marks by some publishers; while others constructed rebuses. Thus, Richard Harrison, an English printer, who died in 1562, printed on his titleIn spite of a few cases of affluence, the general effect pages a hare, a sheaf of rye, and a representation of of the street upon strangers is far from inviting. It the sun. William Norton, who, besides a bookseller, smells of old age and squalidness; its atmosphere seems was treasurer of Christ's Hospital (1593), had a 'sweet as if no breath of heaven ever stirred it; the very loaves in the chandlers' shops look dirty and musty. The herWilliam' growing out of a tun, inscribed with the word rings that dangle from the windows of the same recepOthers equally puerile might be cited. The litetacles appear as old and dried, and out of date, as the rary pirates who forged the marks of the best bookselgarments; the butter has a jaundiced and unclean look; lers chiefly resided in Geneva and Vienna. In the lastand the eggs are of a yellow as dingy as the thickest named city, one J. Thomas Edler Von Trattner made fogs of London. himself as famous in the book-trade by the daring boldness of his piracies, as the Sallee rovers did amongst the shipping interests of the civilised world. No sooner had a printer put forth a carefully-prepared edition of some valued classic, than these forgers set their presses to work, and produced an exact imitation of it at a much lower price. This system had risen by the year 1765 to a pitch so ruinous to the regular trade, that the German publishers entered into a confederacy to put a stop to it. Erasmus Reich, one of the partners in the Weidmannsche Buchhandlung (an extensive publishing concern), called a meeting at Frankfort, and proposed certain laws and regulations, the chief object of which was to tie down the booksellers of Germany not to sell any copies of the spurious editions. To this agreement fifty-nine booksellers subscribed. By the year 1797, the association spread its influence throughout the country, and ever since the latter year, no person can sell a book without being a member of the German booksellers' association (Deutschen Buchhandlers Verein) of Leipsic, to which place the booktrade has since been concentrated. By means of this concentration, improvements have gradually been made in the organisation of the book-trade, until formed into the system it is at present-an explanation of which will be found interesting. Altogether, Monmouth Street presents features which make it one of the most curious thoroughfares in London. It has been the receptacle of the crumbs and offals of fashion for nearly a century and a half; and a true history of its shops would be a correct history of British costume during that long period. Neither is it without its uses and benefits to the public. It helps to exemplify Mr Fisher Murray's axiom, that in London you can get anything you want at the moment you want it.' A man of limited means, having a sudden call for a suit of clothes, for instance, can obtain them at his own price in Monmouth Street at five minutes' warning. It is, we must admit, a dangerous market to deal in; for the Jews invariably ask you double the price which a thing is worth, or what they will, if hard pressed, consent to take. Lately, their trade in cast-off garments has suffered greatly from the introduction of cheap new clothing; some of which is manufactured by a process little better than 'duffing.' Rotten cloth rags, oakum, and other materials of an equally worthless kind, are reduced by machinery to a state which is called (we quote a well-known M. P.) 'devils' dust.' By dint of a vast deal of pressure, and a very little weaving of the fibrous material, a sort of cloth is produced, which, though it has a good outside appearance, possesses very little stability. Garments made of this description of stuff are so cheap that they have withdrawn much business from Monmouth Street. THE TRADE.' THIRD ARTICLE.-BOOKSELLING ABROAD. Is treating of any subject respecting books, it is difficult to get away from Germany. There modern literature first took root, and, nurtured by the press, branched off into the uttermost corners of the earth.' There also literary commerce has been reduced to a system more complete and effectual than in any other country in which the trade' flourishes. It is to Germany, therefore, that our present notices of the booktrade must be for a while confined. Piracy and fraud are as old as bookselling itself. The ingenious devices of the dishonest kept pace with the extensive development of the book-trade by the printer's art; and as soon as a publisher became famous for the correctness and legible neatness of his editions, his name and 'marks' were fraudulently forged by inferior typographers, to insure a readier sale for works than their own merits would have procured. We must here digress for a moment, to say a word concerning the symbols adopted by the old booksellers, who were (and by the book-fancier still are) so well known by the devices they placed on their title-pages, that neither their name nor place of residence was necessary. Of these marks, the best known are as follows:-The The book-trade of Germany is divided into three distinct branches-1st, That of the publisher (Verlagsgeschäft); 2d, The booksellers' business (Sortimentshandel); 3d, The agencies (Commissionsgeschäft). The first two branches are frequently united, and often all three are little description. He buys the manuscript from the carried on together. The business of the publisher needs author, and gets it printed, either by his own presses, or by other parties for his account, and sends copies to such booksellers as he thinks likely to sell the work. The invoice is fastened on the outside of the parcel, half folded up, so that only the head, bearing the name of the bookseller to whom it is directed, and the name of the publisher from whom it comes, is to be seen. The parcels are all put in one bale, and sent to the publisher's agent in Leipsic, who distributes them to the different agents in that town. Every respectable bookseller of Germany employs an agent in Leipsic. Such copies of new works are called Nova;' on the invoice is put pr. Nov.' (pro Novitate). They are sent on condition' (à condition), that is, with the option to keep them or to send them back. The returned books are properly called remittiren, though more frequently and jocosely krebse (crabs). By such conditional consignments, into the merit of a work before they are called upon to private persons have the advantage of being able to look buy it, whereby new publications get to all parts of the country, and at the same price as at the place of publication-a system which is quite peculiar to the Ger |