as if under the impression that everybody
knows who Pugslumby is, and what
his business is. He clearly keeps a shop
of some kind, but scorns to intimate the
nature of his transactions to the casual
public. This is unkind to the genuine
shop-window lover. The blind is
impervious. It is impossible to make out
any of Pugslumby's stock. Pugslumby
becomes a terrible subject of uneasy
conjecture. Does he sell anything ? Is it
really a shop ? If it be really a shop, is
the business so good, the connexion so
large and steady, that no fresh customers
are required ? Or is Pugslumby slow and
behind the age ? Or does (even this
suspicion has dawned upon us) does
Pugslumby discount paper ? Once, and
only once, we saw a portion of the stock of
one of these establishments, in the likeness
of a burnished helmet with truculent brazen
ornaments, and a bloodthirsty red plume,
revealed for a moment above the blind. A
tremendous sword depended from a nail in
the shutter. It was a startling and an
unexpected sight. Could Pugslumby have
lent any hopeful young civilian one
thousand pounds, on condition that he took
seven hundred and fifty pounds' worth of
helmet, red plume, and Castle of Otranto
sword ?

The photographic shops are always
encircled by a crowd of gazers. And, of a
truth, there is always plenty to look at there.
Does an individual achieve celebrity? He
or she is to be seen photographed all over
town within a week. Notoriety? Same
result. Infamy? Same result. Be a thief
on a sufficiently large scale, and you shall
have a prefix to your name. As "Mr."
Higgs. Men and women of all classes, of
all ranks, and of all sorts of characters
may be studied from the pavement. If a
minister make a success, look out all the
old portraits in stock and put them in the
window. Take his portrait again if you
can induce him to sit for it, and label it
"the last;" if you cannot induce him to
sit, label anything as the last portrait of
him. His rival on the other side of the
House is also a good card to play, for it is
of little importance to the sale of these
wares whether their originals happen to
have met with successes or reverses. It is
sufficient that they are talked about at the
moment. With actors, authors, royal
personages, and all other public characters, the
rule holds good. Furthermore, it is not
even necessary to take the actual
photographic portrait of the individual on brisk
sale. Get somebody to draw any sort of
portrait of him, and have it photographed.
The public will buy it. If it be unlike him,
the public will resent his being unlike his
photograph ; not his photograph's being
unlike him. Perhaps the best harvest to
be got out of any individual well known to
the public, is at the time of his or her
decease. This harvest is not of very long
duration, but it is very good while it lasts.
Take your photograph, and frame it in a
deep black border, and advertise it with as
much clap-trap as you can compass, and
you will sell a very satisfactory number of
copies.

The window of a large photographic shop
affords a capital means of judging of the
tone of the public mind at any given time.
From the popular photographs it is easy to
discern what sort of books are being read,
what sort of plays acted, what sort of
frivolity is for the time fashionable. An
experienced Londoner, long absent from
home, and with but an intermittent supply
of newspapers, might say with certainty
from an inspection of the cartes-de-visite in
the shop windows what would be the
prominent subjects of conversation at his first
dinner party.

When the fine weather sets in, the
windows of those shops most set apart for
photographs of scenery become terribly
suggestive to the unfortunates who know that,
by reason of work or impecuniosity, summer
jaunts and autumn trips are not for
them. There are photographs of all the
places you would like to go to; and the
more impossible it is for you to go to them,
the more delightful are the scenes
presented to your longing eye. Quiet English
lanes, leafy Devonshire retreats, and fresh
reviving sea beach, pleasant to think of in
the dusty town. Further afield, lo! the
grand Swiss mountains reposing on the
glaciers which look (in the photograph) so
easy to traverse, and which turn out such
very different things when you try them.
Dark silent pine-woods, shady and cool;
rushing torrents, ice caves, snow fields—
all things beautiful, picturesque, and
unattainable— are mercilessly presented to
the view of the compulsory stay-at-home.
Let him take comfort. The same window
that shows him these natural wonders,
shows him also among the beautiful woods
and by the placid waters of old Thames,
at Maidenhead or Marlow, Pangbourne or
Henley, holiday nooks easily within reach
of limited time and limited cash. And if
even these be beyond his reach, let him