The first shop we come to, is one wholly
unknown in our native land; it is an Order depôt,
a little shop, full of bits of coloured ribbon and
medals or grand crosses; and as everybody in
France is décoré, it is probable that a brisk
business is done in supplying the distinguished
personages who may send round for an order
at any moment, and who may not like to be
kept waiting. Next to the Order depôt, there
is a wig shop, and then comes a china
gimcrack shop, and then a jeweller's, and then
comes a slop-shop for ready-made clothes, and
then an opera-glass vendor's, and then a
gimcrack shop, and then a jeweller's, and then
a shop like Mechi's in Regent- street, and
then a jeweller's, and then a jeweller's, and then
a jeweller's, and then a jeweller's, and then
a jeweller's, and then a jeweller's, and then a
gimcrack shop, and then another gimcrack
shop, and then a jeweller's, and then a
gimcrack shop, and then a jeweller's, and then
an opera- glass shop, and after that a
gimcrack shop, and then a jeweller's, and then
a jeweller's, and then a slop-shop, and then
a jeweller's, and then a jeweller's, and then a
jeweller's, and then a jeweller's, and then
a jeweller's and clock shop, and then a
jeweller's, and then a jeweller's. After this,
comes another Mechi shop, and then another
Order depôt, and then a jeweller's, succeeded
by an opera-glass shop, a watchmaker's, a
Mechi shop, an artificial teeth purveyor's, a
slop-shop, and then a jeweller's. After this
comes a perfumer's, and then a Mechi shop,
and then a jeweller's, and then a silver-smith's,
and then a jeweller's, and then a gim-crack
shop, and then a jeweller's, and then a
jeweller's, and then a jeweller's, and then a
jeweller's; a Mechi shop next, a silversmith's,
and then a jeweller's; and then a photograph
shop, and then a jeweller's; and then a
watch-maker's, and then a jeweller's; and then a
gim-crack shop, and then a slop-shop. At last
—we have been travelling all this time down
one side of the Palais Royal only—at last the
café at the corner.

Now, is it to be expected that one is to sit
down tamely, under such a state of things as
this? But the worst of it is, that this is not all.
The Rue de Rivoli, which is about two miles
long, is full of jewellers' shops. The line of
Boulevard, which is much longer, glitters again
with jewellers' shops, and in the short space of
the Rue de la Paix there are no less than sixteen
of these Temples of Bewilderment. Fifty jewellers'
shops in the Palais Royal, and sixteen in the
Rue de la Paix, and how many more in the
different Passages and the minor streets, besides
the Boulevard and the Rue de Rivoli!

Who can account for the bonbon shops—
those palaces almost more magnificent than the
warehouses of the jewellers themselves, those
huge chocolate and sweetmeat deposits, where
bilious women all alike, bilious themselves,
dispensers of bile to others, sit behind counters
in a state of chronic nausea horrible to
think of?—- Stay! A thought! These retailers
of bile are jewelled, and the retailers of jewels
again are, to a man, bilious. Do the jewellers
and the bonbon vendors mutually support each
other? Do they make exchanges, and swap
bonbons for jewellery, and vice versa? Unhappily,
even this would not account sufficiently
for the difficulty we are considering. If the
bilious women were clothed from head to foot
with gold, and if the jewellers supported life—
horrible thought—on chocolate drops only, it
still would not account for the phenomena with
which we are puzzling ourselves.

There is one more thing which surely we may
be allowed to class among the mysteries of
Paris. The hidden pecuniary resources of the
men in the blue blouses. The writer of these
words wears a beautiful black coat, but he is
unable to afford himself the luxuries that these
men indulge in. What dinners they order at the
restaurant! What good places they occupy at
the theatre! What pleasant drives they take
in open carriages on Sundays!

Now surely Eugène Sue's mysteries of Paris
are trifles to such profound difficulties as are
presented by these commercial riddles. There is one
more, which, applying equally to London and
Paris, may, in conclusion, be whispered in the
reader's ear. In what region of the earth, in
what particular tunnelled-out portion of its
bowels, do those hackney-carriages, whose
numbers come before the thousands, ply for hire?
Many and many is the time that these weary
bones have sunk upon the sordid plush of your
cab, your remise, or your fiacre, out never to
my knowledge has one of those vehicles rejoiced
in a number even so low as five hundred.
Where does number fifty work, number twenty,
ten, one? Has anybody ever seen these
numbers on any hired carriage? Has anybody ever
inhaled the air (with its combined flavour of
bedding and manure) which the interiors of
all the cab tribes exhibit, and which, if the
earliest numbers have been longest on the road,
must be in great perfection in the individual
specimens here alluded to?

NEW WORK BY MR. CHARLES DICKENS.

In No. 84 of ALL THE TEAR ROUND, TO BE
PUBLISHED ON SATURDAY, DECEMBER THE FIRST,
Will be commenced

GREAT EXPECTATIONS,
BY CHARLES DICKENS,
A NEW SERIAL STORY,
To be continued from week to week until completed
in about EIGHT MONTHS.

VOLUME THE THIRD,
Price 5s. 6d., is now ready.