and Weaverbad's India shawl warehouse,
which keeps so many native artists
at Delhi and Lahore employed day and
night in designing fresh patterns. Hard by,
on the other side, is Miss Bricabrac's great
nick-nack shop, where a marquis might
ruin himself in the purchase of
portemonnaies, smelling-bottles, toothpicks, dressing-
cases, blotting-books, French clocks, point
lace, diamond pens, jewelled penwipers,
amethyst card-cases, and watches no bigger than
fourpenny-pieces. About four o'clock during
the height of the London season, the road in
front of these three shops — the shawl-shop,
the music-shop, and the nicknack-shop — is
blockaded by a crowd of carriages, the very
study of the armorial bearings on whose
panels is as good as a course of Clarke's
Introduction to Heraldry, or Mr. Planché's
Pursuivant-at-Arms. The pavement is
almost impassable for mighty footmen,
gravely lounging, as it is the wont of
mighty footmen to do; the air is perfumed
with pomatum and hair-powder, and the eye
dazzled with plush, vivid aiguillettes, and
gold lace.

In Messrs. Octave and Piccolo's shop,
among the grand, semi-grand, square, cottage,
and cabinet pianofortes, the harmoniums,
melodions, accordeons, concertinas, and
flutinas, the last new ballads, polkas, mazourkas,
gems of the last opera, &c., decorated
with flaming lithographs in colours; the
shelves groaning beneath music-books and
opera scores, and pianoforte exercises, and
treatises upon sol-faing; among Erard's
harps, and huge red and yellow concert
posters, and plans of the boxes of the opera
and seats at the Philharmonic; among
circulars from professors of music, who beg to
inform the nobility, gentry, their friends, and
the public that they have just returned from
the continent, or have removed their
residence to such and such a street, where they
have resumed their course of instruction, or
have some equally interesting instruction to
give; among portraits of musical celebrities,
lithographed by the accomplished M.Baugniet,
and concert tickets stuck in the frames of'
looking-glasses; among all these multifarious
objects there circulates a crowd of countesses
in lace, yea, and of duchesses oftentimes, together
with representatives of musical wealth
(chiefly female) of every degree, from the
Princess Perigordowski, who has come to
Messrs. Octave and Co. to negotiate engagements
with the stars of the Italian stage for
her grand ball and concert next week; from
the Dowager Marchioness of Screwtown, who
wants some one at Octave's to recommend her
a first-rate Italian singing master, who will
teach the juvenile Ladies Harriet and Georgina
Skinflint for five shillings a lesson, she
having recently dismissed their former
instructor, Signor Ravioli, for gross misconduct
— a pawnbroker's duplicate for some
degrading article of wearing apparel, we
believe boots, having fallen from the wretched
man's hat, on the occasion of his last visit to
Skinflint House; from these pillars of the
titled world to plump rosy Mrs. Chippendale,
who has "musical evenings" in the Alpha
Road, and wants a good accompanyist,
moderate, a German not preferred. They breathe
so hard, and smell so strong of smoke, and
have such long hair, Mrs. C. says. Besides,
they injure the piano so, and will insist at
last upon playing a "sinfonia," or a "motivo,"
or a "pensée" of their own composition, goodness
knows how many hundred bars or pages
long. Then there is Miss de Greutz, who is
long, lean, pale, and spectacled. She is a
governess is Miss de Greutz, but has views
towards professing singing on an independent
footing, and wishes to ascertain Signer
Pappadaggi's terms (he is the singing master in
vogue), for a series of finishing lessons.
Pappadaggi will have fifteen shillings a lesson
out of her, and bate never a stiver; "it soud
be zi gueeni," he says; and valiant Miss de
Greutz will hoard up her salary, and trot, in
her scanty intervals of leisure, to the signor's
palatial residence in Hyde Park Gardens;
and should you some half-holiday afternoon
pass the open windows of Belinda House,
Bayswater, it is pretty certain that you will
hear the undulating strains of a piano in sore
distress (not the jangling one — that is the
schoolroom piano, where Miss Cripps is
massacring the Huguenots worse than
ever they were on St. Bartholomew's
day), and some feeble, though highly
ornamented cadenzas, the which you may
safely put down as Miss de Grentz's
repetition of her last, or preparation for her next
lesson.

You may observe that the gentlefolks, the
customers who come here to buy, naturally
resort to the counters, and besiege the obliging
assistants; these obliging persons, who are not
in the least like other shop assistants, being
singularly courteous, staid and unobtrusive in
demeanour, and not without, at the same time, a
reasonable dash of independence, being in most
cases sons of partners in the firm, or of
wealthy proprietors of other music
warehouses, who send them here, as the great
restaurateurs in France do their sons, to
other restaurants, to acquire a knowledge
of the business. They have a hard time of it
among their fair customers; a dozen voices
calling at once for works, both vocal and
instrumental, in three or four different
languages: one lady asking for the Odessa
Polka, another for the Sulina Waltz, a
third for Have Faith in one another; a
fourth for L'Ange Déchu, a fifth for an
Italian aria, Sulla Poppa del mio Brik, and
a sixth for Herr Bompazek's new German
ballad, Schlick, schlick, schlick. Yet
Messrs. Octave and Piccolo's young men
contrive to supply all these multifarious
demands, and take money, and give change,
and indulge their customers with commercially