tages which, they yet know, are purchased by such means as a high and noble spirit could never submit to. If you refuse to pay the price, why expect the purchase?' This may be called the key-note of the whole piece. Say that a man has set his heart on being rich. Well, by patient toil, and unflagging attention to the minutest articles of expense and profit, he may attain riches. It is done every day. But let not this person also expect to enjoy the pleasures of leisure, of a vacant mind, of a free, unsuspicious temper.' He must learn to do hard things, to have at the utmost a homespun sort of honesty, to be in a great measure a drudge. 'I cannot submit to all this.' Very good, be above it; only do not repine that you are not rich. How strange to see an illiterate fellow attaining to wealth and social importance, while a profound scholar remains poor and of little account! If, however, you have chosen the riches of knowledge, be content with them. The other person has paid health, conscience, liberty for his wealth. Will you envy him his bargain? You are a modest man-you love quiet and independence, and have a delicacy and reserve in your temper, which renders it impossible for you to elbow your way in the world and be the hero of your own merits. Be content then with a modest retirement, with the esteem of your intimate friends, with the praises of a blameless heart, and a delicate, ingenuous spirit; but resign the splendid distinctions of the world to those who can better scramble for them.' The essayist remarks that men of genius are of all others most inclined to make unreasonable claims. As their relish for enjoyment,' says she, is strong, their views large and comprehensive, and they feel themselves lifted above the common bulk of mankind, they are apt to slight that natural reward of praise and admiration which is ever largely paid to distinguished abilities; and to expect to be called forth to public notice and favour: without considering that their talents are commonly unfit for active life; that their eccentricity and turn for speculation disqualifies them for the business of the world, which is best carried on by men of moderate genius ; and that society is not obliged to reward any one who is not useful to it. The poets have been a very unreasonable race, and have often complained loudly of the neglect of genius and the ingratitude of the age. The tender and pensive Cowley, and the elegant Shenstone, had their minds tinctured by this discontent; and even the sublime melancholy of Young was too much owing to the stings of disappointed ambition.' MISS LINWOOD'S EXHIBITION OF NEEDLEWORK. For nearly half a century, in old Savile House, on the north side of Leicester-square, was exhibited the gallery of pictures in needlework which Miss Mary Linwood, of Leicester, executed through her long life. She worked her first picture when thirteen years old, and the last piece when seventy-eight; beyond which her life was extended twelve years. Genius, virtue, and | MISS LINWOOD'S EXHIBITION. unparalleled industry had, for nearly three-quarters of a century, rendered her residence an honour to Leicester. As mistress of a boardingschool, her activity continued to her last year. In 1844, during her annual visit to her Exhibition in London, she was taken ill, and conveyed in an invalid carriage to Leicester, where her health rallied for a time, but a severe attack of influenza terminated her life in her ninetieth year. By her death, many poor families missed the hand of succour, her benevolent disposition and ample means having led her to minister greatly to the necessities of the poor and destitute in her neighbourhood. No needlework, either of ancient or modern times, (says Mr Lambert,) has ever surpassed the productions of Miss Linwood. So early as 1785, these pictures had acquired such celebrity as to attract the attention of the Royal Family, to whom they were shewn at Windsor Castle. Thence they were taken to the metropolis, and shewn privately to the nobility at the Pantheon, Oxford-street; in 1798, they were first exhibited publicly at the Hanover-square Rooms; whence they were removed to Leicester-square. The pictures were executed with fine crewels, dyed under Miss Linwood's own superintendence, and worked on a thick tammy woven expressly for her use they were entirely drawn and embroidered by herself, no background or other important parts being put in by a less skilful hand-the only assistance she received, if such it may be called, was in the threading of her needles. The pictures appear to have been cleverly set for picturesque effect. The principal room, a fine gallery, was hung with scarlet cloth, trimmed with gold; and at the end was a throne and canopy of satin and silver. A long dark passage led to a prison cell, in which was Northcote's Lady Jane Grey Visited by the Abbot and Keeper of the Tower at Night; the scenic illusion being complete. Next was a cottage, with casement and hatch-door, and within it Gainsborough's cottage children, standing by the fire, with chimney-piece and furniture complete. Near to this was a den, with lionesses; and further on, through a cavern aperture was a brilliant seaview and picturesque shore. The large picture by Carlo Dolci had appropriated to it an entire room. The large saloons of Savile House were well adapted for these exhibition purposes, by insuring distance and effect. The collection ultimately consisted of sixtyfour pictures, most of them of large or gallery size, and copied from paintings by great masters. The gem of the collection, Salvator Mundi, after Carlo Dolci, for which 3,000 guineas had been refused, was bequeathed by Miss Linwood to her Majesty Queen Victoria. In the year after Miss Linwood's death, the pictures were sold by auction, by Christie and Manson; and the prices they fetched denoted a strange fall in the money-value of these curious works. The Judgment on Cain, which had occupied ten years working, brought but £64 1s. ; Jephtha's Rash Vow, after Opie, sixteen guineas; two pictures from Gainsborough, The Shepherd Boy, £17 6s. 6d., and The Ass and Children, £23 2s. The £10 158.; and Lady Jane Grey, by Northcote, £24 13s. In the Scripture-room, The Nativity, by Carlo Maratti, was sold for £21; Dead Christ, L. Caracci, fourteen guineas; but The Madonna della Sedia, after Raffaelle, was bought in at £38 17s. A few other pictures were reserved; and those sold did not realize more than £1,000. OLD LONDON SHOPS. Business in the olden time was conducted in a far more open way than among ourselves. Advertising in print was an art undiscovered. A dealer advertised by word of mouth from an open shop, proclaiming the qualities of his wares, and inviting passengers to come and buy them. The principal street of a large town thus became a scene of noisy confusion. The little we know of the ancient state of the chief London thoroughfares, shews this to have been their peculiarity. In the south of Europe we may still see something of the aspect which the business streets of old London must have presented in the middle ages; but the eastern towns, such as Constanti nople or Cairo, more completely retain these leading characteristics, in ill-paved streets, crowded markets, open shops disconnected with dwelling-houses, and localities sacred to particular trades. The back streets of Naples still possess similar arrangements, which must have existed there unchanged for centuries. The shops are vaulted cells in the lower story of the houses, and are closed at night by heavy doors secured by iron bars and massive padlocks. In the drawings preserved in medieval manuscripts we see such shops delineated. Our first cut, copied from one of the best of these pictures, executed about 1490, represents the side of a street apparently devoted to a confraternity of mercers, who exhibit hats, shoes, stockings, scarfs, and other articles in front of their respective places of business; each taking their position at the counter which projects on the pathway, and from whence they addressed wayfarers when they wanted a customer. Lydgate, the monk of Bury, in his curious poem called London Lack-penny, has described the London shops as he saw them at the close of the fourteenth century: 349 'Where Flemyngs to me began to cry, Lay down your silver and here you may speed."' He afterwards describes the streets crowded with peripatetic traders. Hot peascods' one began to cry, and others strawberries and cherries, while one bade me come near and buy some spice;' but he passes on to Cheapside, then the grand centre of trade, and named from the great market or cheap established there from very carly time: 'Then to the Cheap my steps were drawn, Where much people I there saw stand; One offered me velvet, silk, and lawn, "Here is Paris thread, the finest in the land!" Tempting as all offers were, his lack of money brought him safely through the throng: 'Then went I forth by London stone, Throughout all Canwyke-street; Drapers much cloth me offered anon, Then comes me one, cried, "Hot sheepes feet!" Among the crowd another cried 'Mackerell!' and he was again hailed by a shopkeeper, and invited to buy a hood. The Liber Albus, a century before Lydgate, describes these shops, which consisted of open rooms closed at night by shutters, the tenants being enjoined to keep the space before their shops free of dirt, nor were they to sweep it before those of other people. At that time paving was unknown, open channels drained the streets in the centre, and a few rough stones might be placed in some favoured spots; but mud and mire, or dust and ruts, were the most usual condition of the streets. On state occasions, such as the entry of a sovereign, or the passage to Westminster of a coronation procession from the Tower, the streets were levelled, ruts and gulleys filled in, and the road new gravelled; but these attentions were seldom bestowed, and the streets, OLD LONDON SHOPS. of course, soon lapsed into their normal condition of filthy neglect. The old dramatists, whose works often preserve unique and valuable records of ancient usages, incidentally allude to these old shops; thus in Middleton's comedy, The Roaring Girl, 1611, Moll Cutpurse, from whom the play is named, refuses to stay with some jovial companions: I cannot stay now, 'faith: I am going to buy a shagruff: the shop will be shut in presently. One of the scenes of this play occurs before a series of these open shops of city traders, and is thus described: The three shops open in a rank [like those in our cut]: the first an apothecary's shop; the next a feather shop; the third a sempster's shop;' from the last the passengers are saluted with Gentlemen, what is't you lack? what is't you buy? see fine bands and ruffs, fine lawns, fine cambricks: what is't you lack, gentlemen? what is't you buy?' This cry for custom is often contemptuously alluded to as a characteristic of a city trader; and in the capital old comedy Eastward Hoe, the rakish apprentice Quicksilver asks his sober fellow-apprentice, What! wilt thou cry, what is't ye lack? stand with a bare pate, and a dropping nose, under a wooden penthouse. This dialogue takes place in the shop of their master, Touchstone, a honest goldsmith in the city;' its uncomfortable character, and the exposure of the shopkeeper to all weathers, is fully confirmed by the glimpses of street scenery we obtain in old topographic prints. Faithorne's view of Fish-street and the Monument represents a goldsmith's open shop with its wooden pent house; it appears little better than a shed, with a few shelves to hold the stock; and a counter, behind which the master is ensconced. It shews that no change for the better as regarded the comfort of shopkeepers was made by the Great Fire of London. With the Revolution came a government well-defined in the Bill of Rights, and a consequent additional security to trade and commerce. Traders increased, and London enlarged itself; yet local government continued lax and bad; streets were unpaved, ill-lighted, and dangerous at night. Shops were still rude in construction, open to wind and weather, and most uncomfortable to both salesman and buyer. A candle stuck in a lantern swung in the night breezes, and gave a dim glare over the goods. The wooden penthouse, which imperfectly protected the wares from drifts of rain, was succeeded by a curved projection of lath and plaster. Our third cut, from a print dated 1736, will clearly exhibit this, sale; in this instance, fruit is the vendible commodity, and oranges in baskets appear piled under the window. The lantern ready for lighting hangs on one side. The custom of noting inns by signs, was succeeded by similarly distinguishing the houses of traders; consequently in the seventeenth century sign-painting flourished, and the practice of the art of a sign-painter was the most profitable branch of the fine arts left open to Englishmen. The houses in London not being numbered, a tradesman could only be known by such means; hence every house in great leading thoroughfares displayed its sign; and the ingenuity of traders was taxed for new and characteristic devices by which their shops might be distinguished. The sign was often engraved as a heading to the shop-bill; and many whimsical and curious combinations occurred from the custom of an apprentice or partner in a wellknown house adopting its sign in addition to a new device of his own. These signs were sometimes stuck on posts, as we see them in country inns, between the foot and carriage way. In narrow streets they were slung across the road. More generally they projected over the footpath, supported by ironwork which was wrought in an elaborate, ornamental style. A young tradesman made his first and chiefest outlay in a new sign, which was conspicuously painted and gilt, surrounded by a heavy, richly carved, and painted frame, and then suspended from massive decorative ironwork. Cheapside was still the coveted locality for business, and the old views of that favoured locality are generally curious from the delineation of the line of shops, and crowd of signs, that are presented on both sides the way. From a view of Bow Church and neighbourhood published by Bowles in 1751, we select the two examples of shops engraved below. The two modes of suspending the signs are those generally in vogue. In one instance the shop is enclosed by glazed windows; in the other it is open. The latter is a pastry cook's; a cake on a stand occu heavy drifting rain must have been a serious inconvenience when it happened, not to speak of the absolute damage it must have done. The mercers, hatters, and shoemakers made their places of business distinguished by throwing out poles, such as we see at the shops of country barbers, at an angle from the shop-front over the foot-path, hanging rows of stockings, or lines of hats, &c., upon them. When a shower came, these could at once be hauled in, and saved from damage; but the signs swung and grated in the breeze, or collected water in the storm, which descended on the unlucky pedestrian, for whom no umbrella had, as yet, been invented. The spouts from the houses, too, were ingeniously contrived to condense and pour forth a volume of water which wavered in the wind, and made the place of its fall totally uncertain; a few rough semi-globular stones formed a rude pavement in places; but it was often in bad condition, for each householder was allowed to do what he pleased in this way, and sometimes he solved the difficulty of doubting what was best by doing nothing at all. The pedestrian was protected from carriages by a line of posts, as seen in our cut; but he was constantly liable to be thrust in the gutter, or driven into a doorway or shop, by the sedan-chairs that crowded the streets, and which were thoroughly hated by all but the wealthy who used them, and those who profited by their use. The art of walking the streets of London' was therefore an art, necessary of acquirement by study, and Gay's poem, which bears the title, is an amusing picture of all the difficulties which beset pedestrianism when the wits of Queen Anne's reign rambled from tavern to tavern, to gather news or enjoy social converse. These ponderous signs, with their massive iron frameworks, as they grew old, grew dangerous; they would rot and fall, and when this did not occur, they made night hideous' by the shrieks and groans of the rusty hinges on which they swung. They impeded sight and ventilation in narrow 351 streets, and sometimes hung inconveniently low for vehicles. At last they were doomed by Act of Parliament, and in 1762 ordered to be removed, or, if used, to be placed flat against the fronts of the houses. They had increased so enormously that every tradesman had one, each trying to hide and outvie his neighbour by the size or colour of his own, until it became a tedious task to discover the shop wanted. Gay, in his 'Trivia,' notes how -'Oft the peasant, with inquiring face, Bewildered, trudges on from place to place; He dwells on every sign with stupid gaze, Enters the narrow alley's doubtful maze, Tries every winding court and street in vain, And doubles o'er his weary steps again.' In addition to swinging painted sign-boards, it was sometimes the habit with the rich and ambitious trader to engage the services of the wood-carver to decorate his house with figures or emblems, the figures being those of some animal or thing adopted for his sign, as the stag seen over one of the doors in the cut of the Cheapside shops; or else representations, modelled and coloured after life,' of pounds of candles, rolls of tobacco, cheeses, &c. &c. There existed in St Martin's-lane, twenty years ago, a fine example of a better-class Lon OLD LONDON SHOPS. foliated ornament, and was unique as a surviving example of the better class shops of the last century. It was in the early part of the reign of George I. that shops began to be closed in with sashwindows, allowing them to be open in fine weather, but giving the chance of closing them in winter and during rain. Addison alludes to it in the Tatler, as if it was a somewhat absurd luxury. Private shops,' says he, stand upon Corinthian pillars, and whole rows of tin pots show themselves, in order to their sale, through a sash window.' A great improvement of the most economic and simple kind succeeded the old and expensive signs. This was numbering houses in a street. The first street so numbered was New Burlington-street, in June 1764. The fashion spread eastward, and the houses in Lincoln's-inn-fields were the next series thus distinguished. The old traders who stuck pertinaciously to their signs, affixed them flat to their walls, and a few thus preserved rot in obscurity in some of our lonely old streets; one of the earliest and most curious is The Doublet,' in Thames-street, which seems to have originated in the days of Elizabeth, and to have been painted and repainted from time to time, till it is now scarcely distinguishable. The once-famed inn, used by Shakspeare, The Bell,' in Great Carterlane, is no longer an inn; but its sign, a bell, boldly sculptured in high relief, and rich in decoration, is still on its front. Other sculptured signs remain on city houses, but units now represent the hundreds that once existed. At the corner of Union-street, Southwark, where it opens on the Blackfriars-road, is a well-executed old sign; a gilt model, life-size, representing a dog licking an overturned cooking-pot. It is curious that this very sign is mentioned in that strange old poem, Cock Lorell's Boat' (published by Wynkyn de Worde, in the early part of the reign of Henry VIII.): one of the passengers is described as dwelling ' at the Sygne of the dogges hed in the pot.' In Holywell-street, Strand, is the last remain don shop, of which we here give a wood-cut. It had survived through many changes in all its essential features. The richly carved private doorcase told of the well-to-do trader who had erected it. The shop was an Italian warehouse; and the window was curiously constructed, carrying out the traditional form of the old open shop with its projecting stall on brackets, and its slight window above, but effecting a compromise for security and comfort by enclosing the whole in a sort of glass box; above which the trade of the occupant was shewn more distinctly in the small oil-barrels placed upon it, as well as by the models of candles which hung in bunches from the canopy above. The whole of this framework was of timber richly carved throughout with |