because my pretty tradesman's daughter, my
humble milliner or sempstress; even my
comely cook, housemaid, or damsel of all
work cannot afford the real barbaric pearl
and gold—the real rose and table diamonds
—that they are to be debarred from wearing
innocent adornments, wherewith to accomplish
the captivation (which their bright
faces have begun) of their respective swains
and sweethearts? No. Leaving their
aristocratic sisters to disport themselves in real
Cashmeres from Delhi and Allahabad, and
real lace shawls from Brussels and Malines,
they are content with humble Paisleys, and
unobtrusive Greenocks; so, abandoning
genuine precious stones, genuine guinea gold,
genuine pearls and cameos, to perhaps not
the happiest, but at least the more fortunate
of their sex, they shall revel as it pleases
them in the eighteenpenny finery of this
Arcadia; and Samuel or William walking
"along with them," or "keeping of 'em
company" in the smartest of surtouts and the
whitest of Berlin gloves, on crowded steam-
boats, or amid the velvetty glades of the
metropolitan parks, shall be as proud of
them and of their jewels as though they
were duchesses.

One more department of Arcadia yet
remains to be explored. This is the section
devoted to what I may call minor utilities,
and though minor, they occupy a very
considerable portion of the Lowther Arcade.
Heaped in wild confusion—though not worse
confounded—on the estrades of half a dozen
merchants, are different ranges of shelves;
grades on grades of such articles as cakes of
Windsor soap, shaving dishes, shaving brushes,
pocket combs, snuffer trays, bronze candlesticks,
lucifer boxes, pipe lights, sealing wax;
hair, tooth, clothes, and blacking brushes,
French coffee-pots, tea canisters, workboxes,
nutmeg graters, paper weights, pencil-cases,
china mantel-shelf ornaments, nick-nacks for
drawing-room tables, artificial flowers, watch-
chains, perfumery, hair pins, plaster statuettes,
penknives, scissors, dog-chains, walking-sticks,
housewife-cases, knives, forks, and spoons,
china plates, cups and saucers, wine glasses,
decanters, presents from Brighton, tokens
from Ramsgate, letter-clips, portfolios, music-
cases, reticules, scent bottles, and fans. There
is scarcely a minor want, an everyday wish in
the catalogue of everyday wants and wishes
but which can be supplied from the delightfully
egregious farrago of fancy hucksteries
here collected. It is the Bagdad of house-
keeping odds and ends, the very place I
should advise all those about to marry to
visit when they have found that besides the
household furniture, plate, linen, and bedding,
pots, pans, they have discovered indispensable
in fitting up their bridal mansion, there are
yet a thousand and one things they cannot
do without, and which nothing but a walk
through Arcadia will satisfy them that they
really want.

The most wonderful thing connected with
the cosmopolitan merchandise displayed in the
Lowther Arcade, is the apparent recklessness
with which the commodities are exposed to
the touch of the passers-by, and the enormous
apparent confidence which their proprietors
appear to place in their customers. The toys
are tested, and the minor utilities examined;
the musical instruments are sounded at the
good pleasure of those without, whether they
mean buying or not buying; but be assured, O
man of sin—pilferer of small wares and petty
larcener—that there is an eye within keenly
glancing from some loophole contrived
between accordions and tin breastplates that
watches your every movement, and is "fly,"—
to use a term peculiarly comprehensible to
dishonest minds—to the slightest gesture of
illegal conveyancing.

The Lowther Arcade should, to be properly
appreciated and admired, be viewed at three
widely distant periods of the day. First, in
the early morning, when the bells of St. Martins
have just commenced carilloning the
quarter-chimes to eight. Then the myriad
wares that Lowther has to sell, are scattered
about in a manner reminding you of the parti-
coloured chaos of one of the Lowther's own
kaleidoscopes indefinitely magnified and blown
to pieces, or of the wardrobe and property room
of a large theatre combined, when the employés
are "taking stock." In the midst of this
chaotic olla podrida of oddities pick their way,
with cautious steps yet nimble, the Arcadian
shepherds and shepherdesses, wearing mostly
over their pastoral garments large aprons
and pinafores of brown holland and grey
calico. With feather brooms or gauzy dusters
they dust and cleanse and furbish and rub up
and brighten all the multifarious paraphernalia
of their calling; and, swift the amphitheatrical
benches or grades are crowned
with rainbow toys, or glittering glass cases
symmetrically arranged, artistically displayed
to catch the eye and provoke the appetite of
taste. Some pilgrim from the west may, at
such times, fortuitously be found gliding
among the fancy goods that corruscate the
pavement, nervously apprehensive of stepping
an inch to the right or to the left, lest he
should "fall into a bit of property," his own
might not be sufficient to replace.

I have no room for statistics, so I will not
enter into any calculation as to the numerical
quantities of fancy wares vended in the
Lowther Arcade; the gross amount of money
received, the average number of visitors, or
matters of that kind. I may passingly observe,
that there are toys, and gems, and nick-
nacks here, that are things of great price
to-day, and positive drugs in the market
tomorrow. At one time the public toy-taste
runs upon monkeys that run up sticks, or old
gentlemen that swing by their own door-
knockers, squeaking dreadfully the while: at
another period the rage is for the squeezable
comic masks and faces (at first and fallaciously