that comes to the clothesman's net—all clothes
that come to his bag. He would buy your
head if it were loose.

On every merchant's shopboard similar
heaps of hydra-natured garments are
tumbling out of similar sacks. Then ensues
frantic yelling, screeching, lung-tearing, ear-
piercing bargain-making. They gibber, they
howl, they clutch each other fiercely, and
grapple over a farthing like wolves. See
yonder yellow-visaged old mercator, with
salt rheum in his eye, and a beard like the
beard of an insolvent goat, grown careless of
his personal appearance. He is from
Amsterdam, and can speak no English; yet he
gibbers, and clutches, and grapples with the
keenest of his British brethren. He holds
up his fingers to denote how much he will
give, and no more. For Moses' sake, another
finger! S'help me, you 're robbing me!
S'help me, it's yoursh! And the mercator
has the best of the bargain, for your Jew,
when a seller, is as loth to refuse money as
he is, when a buyer, to part with it.

Now the air is darkened with legs and
arms of garments held up to be inspected as
to their condition. The buyer pokes, and
peers into, and detects naplessness, and spies
out patches, and is aware of rents, and smells
out black and blue reviver, and noses darns
and discovers torn linings; the seller,
meanwhile, watching every movement with lynx-
eyed inquietude. A lull takes place—a very
temporary lull, while this inspection is going
on; but only wait an instant, and you shall
hear the howling, screeching, and see the
clutching and grappling commence de novo.
The air feels hot, and there is a fetid, squalid
odour of rags. Jew boys stand in the midst
of the market calling sweet-stuff and hot
cakes for sale. Hark at Mammon and Gammon
yelling at each other, browbeating,
chaffering in mutilated English and bastard
Hebrew. They do make a great noise,
certainly; but is there not a little buzz, a trifling
hum of business in the area of the Royal
Exchange just before the bell rings? Does
not Capel Court resound sometimes to the
swell of human voices ? Is not the
immaculate Auction Mart itself occasionally
anything but taciturn, when the advowson of a
comfortable living is to be sold ? We can
make bargains, and noises about them, too,
for other things besides old clothes.

Look at that heap of old clothes—that
Pelion upon Ossa of ostracised garments.
A reflective mind will find homilies, satires,
aphorisms, by the dozen—thought-food by the
ton weight, in that pile of dress-offal. There
is my lord's coat, bespattered by the golden
mud on Fortune's highway; threadbare in the
back with much bowing; the embroidery
tarnished, the spangles all blackened; a
Monmouth Street laced coat. Revivified, coaxed,
and tickled into transitory splendour again, it
may lend vicarious dignity to some High
Chamberlain, or Stick-in-Waiting, at the court of
the Emperor Soulouque. There is a scarlet
uniform coat, heavily embroidered, which, no
doubt, has dazzled many a nursemaid in its
day. It will shine at masquerades now; or,
perchance, be worn by Mr. Belton, of the
Theatres Royal; then emigrate, may be, and
be the coat of office of the Commander-in-
Chief of King Quashiboo's body-guard; or,
with the addition of a cocked hat and straps,
form the coronation costume of King Quashiboo
himself. And there is John the footman's
coat, with ruder embroidery, but very like
my lord's coat for all that. There, pell-mell,
cheek by jowl, in as strange juxtaposition,
and as strange equality, as corpses in a
plague-pit, are the groom's gaiters and my
Lord Bishop's spatterdashes; with, save the
mark! poor Pat's ill-darned, many-holed
brogues, his bell-crowned felt hat, his
unmistakeable blue coat with the brass buttons,
high in the collar, short in the waist, long in
the tails, and ragged all over. There is no
distinction of ranks; no precedence of rank,
and rank alone, here. Patrick's brogues, if
they were only sound and whole, instead of
holey, would command a better price than my
lord's torn black silk small-clothes; yon
groom's gaiters are worth double the
episcopal spatterdashes; and that rough fustian
jacket would fetch more than the tattered
dress-coat with only one sleeve, albeit 'twas
made by Stultz, and was once worn by Beau
Smith.

Where are the people, I wonder, to whom
these clothes belonged? Who will wear them
next? Will the episcopal spatterdashes grace
the calves of a Low Church greengrocer?
Will John the footman's coat be transferred
to Sambo or Mungo, standing on cucumber-
shinned extremities on the foot-board of a
chariot belonging to some militia field-marshal
or other star of the Upper Ten Thousand of
New York ? Who was John, and whose footman
was he? How many a weary mile the
poor Jews have walked to get these sweepings
of civilisation together, and make for a
moment a muck-heap of fashion in Cloth
Fair—a dunghill of vanity for chapmen to
huckster over! All the lies and the subterfuges
of dress, the padded coats and whaleboned
waistcoats, the trousers that were
patched in places where the skirts hid them,
have come naked to this bankruptcy. The
surtout that concealed the raggedness of the
body-coat beneath; the body-coat that
buttoned over the shirtless chest; the boots
which were not Wellingtons, as in their
strapped-down hypocrisy they pretended to
be, but old Bluchers; all are discovered,
exposed, turned inside out, here. If the people
who wore them could only be treated in the
same manner—what remarkably unpleasant
things we should hear about one another, to
be sure!

The Nemesis of Cloth Fair is impartial,
unyielding, inexorable. She has neither
favourites nor partialities: a dress-coat—be