closing system—on Saturdays, at least—is not
prevalent in Liverpool; and thousands have
yet their purchases to make on Sunday morning.
Before we enter Whitechapel glowing
with gas flowing from enormous jets, we are
attracted by an extra blaze of light, by a
concourse of people, and by a confusion of
tongues, over which one strident and resonant
voice dominates; all being gathered round
the booth of Messrs Misture and Fitt, to
which booth we must turn aside for a
moment.

In the left hand centre of a piece of waste
land, these gentlemen have boldly pitched
—among the potsherds, the dead cats, and
broken bottles—a monster marquee, gaily
decorated with pink and white stripes and
variegated flags. Here Messrs. Misture and
Fitt have gone into the quack line of business,
in a Bohemian or travelling manner.
They are herb doctors, chiropodists, universal
medicine vendors, veterinary prescribers, and
much more besides. A mob of men, women
and children are talking, screaming, laughing
and jesting around the temporary laboratory of
these medical sages, before a long counter
which creaks beneath a bountiful spread of
nasty-looking preparations, pills, pots of ointment,
bottles of sarsaparilla, cases of herbs,
blisters, plaisters and boluses. The whole
affair has the appearance of the stock in
trade of half-a-dozen unsuccessful chemists
and druggists, who had been burnt out or
emigrated to the backwoods, or set up
business in Canvas Town, and here clubbed
the remainder of their goods as a last effort
to sell off under prime cost. There are
several gaily decorated placards eulogistic
of Misture's Epileptic Pills, and Fitt's Concentrated
Essence of Peppermint. Fitt is
haranguing his select auditory as we draw
near. His style of eloquence is something
beyond the old hocus-pocus diatribes
of the old medical mountebanks. He is
not so broad as Cheap Jack, not so lofty as
Dulcamara, not so scientifically unintelligible
as the quacks you see in the Champs Elysées
or the Boulevard du Temple, in Paris. But
he is astonishingly rapid; and mingles with
a little bit of sporting a snack of slang, and
a few genteel anecdotes of the nobility and
gentry. He has so fluent a delivery, such
tickling jokes for the men and such sly leers
for the ladies, that the former slap their legs
and break forth into enthusiastic encomiums
in the dialect of Tim Bobbin. The latter
simper and blush delightfully. Some of his
jokes apply forcibly to the personal appearance
of a select few of his auditory, and provoke
roars of laughter. A happy allusion to
the neighbouring church-yard, being close to
a doctor's shop, tells immensely. At the
upper end of the drug-heaped counter the
other partner Misture—hard- featured with a
fox's face; one of those men who will wear
black clothes and white neckcloths, and
who never can look respectable in them—is
silently but busily engaged in handing over
divers packets of the medicines his partner
has been praising to eager and numerous
purchasers. I see through Misture and Fitt
in a moment. Fitt is the volatile partner,
the fine arts professor. Misture is the sound
practical man of business. Misture is the
careful builder, who lays the foundation and
gets up the scaffolding: Fitt does the ornamental
work and puts on the fancy touches.
Do you not remember when Geoffrey Crayon
and Buckthorne went to the bookseller's dinner,
that the latter pointed out the partner
who attended to the carving, and the partner
who attended to the jokes? They arc
prototypes of Misture and Fitt.

The busy throng tends Whitechapel way,
and down Whitechapel we must go. So
great is the number of orange-sellers and
oranges in Whitechapel, that it would seem
as if the whole of one year's produce of
St. Michael's and the Azores had been disgorged
into the narrow street this Saturday
night. The poor creatures who sell this fruit
—desperately ragged and destitute—were
formerly much harried and beset by the
police, who in their over-zeal made descents
and razzias upon them, put them to horrid
rout and confusion, and made so many of
them captives to their bows and spears (or
batons), that the miserable creatures scarcely
dared to venture into the light for grievous
fear and trembling. They offered oranges in
bye-places and secret corners, as if they had
been smuggled merchandise, prohibited under
annihilating penalties. Latterly, however,
some benevolent persons took their case in
hand; and, demonstrating to the authorities
that to obstruct a thoroughfare was not
quite high treason, nor to offer an orange for
sale was not quite sufficient to warrant a
human creature being hunted like a wild
beast, the dread taboo was taken off, and
some small immunities were conceded to the
army of orange-vendors.

My Uncle's counting-houses, which abound
here in Whitechapel, are all thronged tonight.
As per flourishing gold letters on his
door-jamb, he proposes to lend money on
plate, jewellery, and valuables; but he is not
much troubled with plate, jewellery, or valuables
on a Saturday night. If you enter
one of these pawnshops—they are called so
plainly, without reticence or diffidence, hereabout
—and elbow your way through Vallambrosian
thickets of wearing apparel and
miscellaneous articles, you will observe these
peculiarities in the internal economy of the
avuncular life, at variance with London practice;
that the duplicates are not of cardboard,
but of paper having an appearance
something between Dock- warrants and
Twelfth-cake lottery tickets, and that the
front of each compartment of the counter is
crossed by a stout wooden barrier; whether
for the convenience of the pledger to rest
his elbows on while transacting business, or