pharmacy. You are bewildered on entering them
by the blaze of glass and gilding, you are
rendered faint by delicious odours, you are restored
again by draughts of medicated waters which
gush forth into long tumblers at the touching
of a spring. Now, how are these palaces kept
going? I pass them often, but never see any one
making a purchase or giving an order. Their
proprietors, too—both profoundly miserable
men; one being a specimen of pale misery, and
the other, which is much more terrible, of rosy
misery—are for ever increasing their expenditure,
and whenever Floridus gets a new scent-bottle
and sticks it in his window, or a flesh-brush, or
a galvanic battery, or what not, Pallidus is
obliged to follow his lead, and the next day the
same goods will appear in his shop as surely as
the morning comes round.

Now, the reason why it seems so extraordinary
and mysterious that these two druggists are
able to keep their heads above water is, that it
appears to the writer that every member of his
acquaintance gets his or her medicines either
from Bell and Co., or from Messrs. Savory and
Moore, as the case may be. It is true that on one
occasion, when I had been dining with the Surgit
Amaris, that eminent Greek firm in the City, and
found on my return that I had no carbonate of soda
in the house,—it is true that I then rushed forth
in wild haste, and luckily finding—it was Saturday
night—that the emporium of the rosy sufferer
was still open, I purchased an ounce of the
medicine of which my heated frame stood in
need. It is impossible to describe the sensation
made by the giving of this order. A boy,
pining in secret behind a desk, sprang suddenly
into life, and instantly summoned the great
Floridus himself from the back parlour, where
he was perhaps supping on rose lozenges and
Iceland moss, washed down with soda-water
from the fountain. Both man and boy were
kept in violent commotion for at least ten
minutes, by my order. It was entered in books
—double-entered, perhaps—the drug itself was
wrapped in paper, and the parcel so made was
lapped up at the end, then the soda was shaken
down into the lapped up end, at which point
Floridus made a remark upon the weather, and
I, looking round the shop, and noting its
magnificence, hoped that the medicine would not
come to less than fourpence. The parcel was
now lapped up at the other end and shaken
down in turn to that extremity, when Floridus
made a second remark on the weather, including
the subject of crops, and I, seeing that
another piece of magnificent paper was going to
be pressed into the service, began to think that
I should feel miserable if my purchase came to
less than sixpence. When an outer paper,
thick and soft and smooth, was laid upon the
counter, and the already sufficiently protected
soda was placed upon it, I would have given
much to have been allowed to clutch my
purchase, pay my money, and rush out of the shop.
But this was not to be. New expenses must be
incurred by the firm with which I was dealing,
in supplying me with a coloured wrapper over
all, in vast outlays of sealing-wax, and, finally,
in the addition of an adhesive label, with"
Carbonate of Soda" engraved upon it in the best
style of printing. When the miserable Floridus
announced that all this only came to THREE
pence (it would have been a relief if he had
said " threppence"), I felt that men had sunk
into the earth for less offences than I had been
guilty of in making such a purchase.

There are other mysteries of London besides
the chemists' shops. Who finds the money
—and delights to spend it—that keeps on foot
those newspapers of which we are told authori-
tatively that " they don't pay?" Who are the
people who are always ready to come forward
with the means of supporting the insolvent
management of a theatre? Such capitalists are
always forthcoming at a pinch. Where are they
to be heard of?

The print trade, again. Who buys those
proofs before letters which issue from time to
time upon the London world? How few people
one knows, who purchase prints. In how few
houses do you see them hanging up. Our
friends' walls are not decorated thus: with bad
pictures—yes; but with prints—no.

Take the fur trade, again. How is that
sustained? How are expensive premises in fashionable
situations maintained by selling furs? It is
a ghastly sight, in the summer months, to see a
heated shopkeeper emerge from the door of his
warehouse and stand by the side of the stuffed
lion, whom the moths are at work at, gazing out
upon the world of London from under his awning!
A fur shop with an awning! How that shopman
must hate those hot stuffed animals by which he is
surrounded. How glad he must be that the
moths are slowly sapping away the foundations
of the lion's tail, and exposing the stuffing of
the Polar bear to the eye of the curious.

These are some of the mysteries of London.
There are many more. What do the bakers do
with the rows of loaves which one sometimes
sees round their shelves at the decline of day,
still unsold? What becomes of your
unpurchased bun? Who buys the cabbages, gigantic
cart-loads of which are imported into the
metropolis? Who ever sees a cabbage at table? Who
ever orders a cabbage for dinner? Lastly, how
is the great tailoring firm of Joses and Son, in
whose shop no human being is ever seen—how is
that kept up, and in such splendid preservation?

But if these mysteries of commercial London
are profound and hard of solution, what are those
of Paris? If the whole population of Paris were
supported, fed, nourished, clothed, lodged, and
washed, with jewellery, it would but hardly and
unsatisfactorily account for the number, the
incalculable number, of the jewellers' shops with
which—now more than ever—the metropolis of
France is furnished. The Boulevard from one end
to the other is all a-blaze with gold and jewellery;
and as to the Rue de la Paix and the Palais
Royal —- But let us, being on the spot, take
a walk round the enclosure of the Palais Royal,
and note the exact nature of the different
emporiums which surround this Walhalla of luxury.