is resonant with the pattering of feet, the
humming of voices, the laughter of children,
the rustling of silken dresses, and buying,
selling, bargaining, and chaffering.

The commodities vended in the Lowther
Arcade I may classify under three heads:
Toys, Jewellery, and Minor Utilities, about
each of which I have a word to say.

Imprimis of toys. Enormous, preposterous,
marvellous is Lowther in respect of toys. She
possesses amphitheatres, rows upon rows,
galleries upon galleries; Great Pyramids of
Egypt, Great Towers of Belus, Great Tons
of Heidelberg, Great Beds of Ware, Great
Dragons of Wantley, Giant Helmets of
Otranto—of what? Of toys. Birmingham is
the toyshop of Europe; Blair's Preceptor
and Pinnock's Treasury of Knowledge say it
is. But no: Lowther is. Look around, if
you are sceptical, upon the toys of all nations,
and for children of all ages, which give children
such exquisite delight in playing with
them—which give papa and mamma delight
scarcely less exquisite in buying them.
Cosmopolitan toys, too. Look at the honest,
hearty, well-meaning toys of old England.
The famous cock-horses of such high blood
and mettle, that the blood has broken out all
over their skins in an eruption of crimson
spots; so full of spirit that their manes
stand bolt upright, and their tails project
like comets; such high and mighty cock-
horses, that they disdain to walk, and take
continual carriage exercise on wooden
platforms, running on wheels. The millers' carts,
so bravely painted, so full of snowy sacks,
supposed to contain best boulted flour; but,
in reality, holding sawdust. The carriers'
carts, the mail phaetons, the block-tin
omnibuses, the deal locomotives with woolly steam
rushing from the funnels, the brewers' drays,
and those simple, yet interesting, vehicles of
plain white deal—exact models, in fact, of the
London scavengers' carts—so much in request
at Brighton and Margate for the cartage of
sand, pebbles and sea-weed, and sometimes
used as hearses for the interment of a doll, or
as Bath chairs for the exercise of an unwilling
poodle.

Can you look unmoved, although you be
a philosopher and your name Zeno, Plato,
or Socrates, on the great Noah's arks—those
Edens of wooden zoology, where the mouse
lies down with the cameleopard (and is nearly
as big), where the lion is on such familiar
terms with the jackass as to allow him to
stand atop of him, with his hoofs in his jagged
mane; where the duck is neatly packed (for
more commodious stowage) in the bosom of
the tigress, and then stands on his head
between the fore feet of the elephant? Can you
passively inspect the noble fluffy donkeys,
with real fur, and the nicely equipoised panniers,
and harness of softest, brownest leather?
And those desirable family mansions, the
dolls' houses, with the capital modern furniture,
plate, glass and linen, with commands to
sell which Messrs, Musgrove and Gadsden are
not likely to be honoured. And the glorious
kitchens, with that bottle-jack and meat
screen and dripping pan, at which was roasted
the wooden sirloin of beef, painted and
varnished. The boxes of red-handled carpenters'
tools, which cut, and sawed, and chiselled
nothing but children's fingers. The boxes of
tea things—now of wood, now of more
ambition, tin and lead. The dolls—from Missey's
flaxen-headed beauty, with the moveable blue
eyes and the elegant pink leather extremities,
swathed in silver tissue paper, to Master
Jackey's favourite policeman, A 1, very blue
in attire, and very stiff, with a very glazed
hat, an intensely legible number, and
varnished wooden boots. The fierce Hungarian
hussar on horseback, with that cruel curved
wire and counter-weight stuck through his
entrails, with which he maintains an unceasing
seesaw. The drummer with moveable
arms. The musical toys, the accordions, the
marvellous kaleidoscopes regarded at first as
phantasmagoria of delight; but, breaking, or
being broken, soon disclosing, to our great
disappointment and disgust, nothing but a
disk of tin, a fragment of smoked glass, and
some tawdy coloured chips? And such is
life.

Hoops, nine-pins, drums covered with real
parchment, innocently white above, but
which, were you to tear them, and look at the
underpart, would, I gage, be found to be
fragments of old deeds and indentures—such
is life again: French toys, fierce toys, warlike
toys, smelling of Young France, and glory,
and blood—such as miniature cannon, lancers,
sabretasches, war steamers armed en flûte,
sabres, muskets, shakos, and tri-coloured
flags surmounted by the resuscitated Eagle
of France. German toys, which like everything
else coming from Deutschland, are somewhat
quaint, and somewhat eccentric, and a thought
misty: for example, queer old carved men
and women, in queer attitudes, and animals
whose anatomy is likewise of the queerest
kind, and who yet have a queer expression of
life and animation about them. Tortuous
games, played with hammers and dice, and
bells, and little men, which remind you
somehow, you know not why, of Rhine
Schlosses, and Gnomes and Undine, and
Albert Dürer's mailed knights. Then the
Germans have monks and hermits who open,
like the dolls' houses cupboard-door fashion,
and show you (where gentlemen are generally
supposed to accommodate—well, there is no
harm in it—their insides) little chapels and
oratories, with little altars and candles and
priests. And who but the Germans too,
would make long panoramas and dioramas
opening in the accordion and collapsing
manner, and strange monsters in boxes? An
infinity of other jou-joux, such as India-rubber
balls, whips of all shapes and capacities for
chair or cock-horse flagellation, skipping
ropes, flutes, spades, rakes and hoes: all these