dinner and tea, and their wages range from five
to fifteen shillings a week, the average being
ten for the skilled hands, and five for young
beginners – mere children, who certainly could not
earn as much money at anything else. Although
there are slack and busy seasons in this trade,
as in every other, the employment is pretty
regular all the year round. At this moment
artists and die-sinkers are at work for next year.
About June or July their designs will be finished,
and copies struck off for the travellers who go
out with their pattern-books, as early as August.
And there are articles besides valentines made
here : articles which come in at unpoetical
seasons, to keep the machinery of the establishment
in full play. Among those lace dies in
the press-room, you will find a considerable
number of dies for printing trade marks – labels
for bottles, and tinsel devices for linen and
calico, duly registered – to imitate which is now
a misdemeanour, punishable with fine and
imprisonment. The trade marks for linen and
cotton fabrics, however, are quite in the valentine
style, and only fall short of ideality in so
far as they are minus poetry. Here, for example,
is an oval device in silver paper, in the midst of
which a lady of the ballet is standing on the
very tips of her toes, gracefully surrounding
her lovely form by a scarf – the whole being
designed to give the stamp of authenticity to a
bale of muslin, which is possibly destined to be
cut up for bridal garments. I scarcely expected
in Cupid's manufactory to meet with an important
and significant commercial fact. But I
did. It is, that the demand for trade marks for
cotton goods, which fell off suddenly at the
beginning of the American war, and which a year
ago ceased almost entirely, is now again becoming
active. A sign of reviving trade among the
symbols of languishing love, which I commend
to the notice of the City-article writers. It is
also worthy of note, that the export trade in
valentines is reviving. That, too, was damaged
by the Transatlantic struggle : there being
naturally no corner for love, in hearts inflamed
with anger and hate.

But let not considerations of commerce and
politics interfere with the higher claims of art.
Two of the questions which I often put to
myself in the days when I was wholly ignorant
of the great valentine economy yet remain
unanswered. Who draws the pictures? Who writes
the poetry? For a practical elucidation of this
mystery we very properly and fitly go up-stairs
to the higher regions of the establishment. In
a well-lighted room, exclusively devoted to art,
we find six draughtsmen transferring their
designs to stone. The designs are highly
finished and elaborately coloured, and some of
them are really beautiful. They don't look so
well when they are printed, for much the same
reason that a wood-engraving rarely comes up
to the original drawing. They are spoilt by
the heavy-handed process of colouring, as the
drawing on wood is often marred by the
engraver. There are no middle tints. It goes,
if you will excuse the popular phrase, the
whole hog or none. Bright blue or nothing,
blood red and no surrender ! Looking,
however, at some of the drawings, I can detect no
fault in them. I have seen worse things
on the stairs of the Royal Academy. But
these designs are intended for the superior order
of valentines. The common kinds and the
comic kinds are drawn out of doors. Nothing
coarse or vulgar is issued from this
establishment, and the common specimens are only
common, in so far as the paper is inferior and the
drawing is dashed in with more regard to effect
than finish. The subjects of some of the comic
valentines are copied from drawings in Punch
and his humorous contemporaries, but the great
majority of them are original, and deal mainly
with the passing follies and fashions of the day
– crinoline, the Dundreary whiskers, the jacket
coat, the spoon bonnet, and so forth. The
regular comic artist of the establishment – a
very clever fellow, by the way – does not work
on the premises : his fancy being probably of too
buoyant a nature to brook being chained to a
bench, or controlled by regular hours. I understand
that he is a highly prosperous person,
that he drives up to the door in a Hansom cab,
and is very sharp and short with the head of the
firm. The poet, too, works out ; but it was my
happiness to meet him on the door-step on
taking my leave. I am bound to say that he
looked like a poet. He had raven ringlets,
wore a cloak with a velvet collar, and had a
fine phrensy in his eye. I caught it just as it
was rolling, and I said to myself, " Nascitur, non
fit." What does he sing of our lady and
gentleman churchward-bound along the pale brown
pathway ?

  The path before me gladly would I trace,
  With one who's dearest to my constant heart,
  To yonder church, the holy sacred place,
  Where I my vows of Love would fain impart;
  And in sweet wedlock's bonds unite with thee,
  Oh, then, how blest my life would ever be!

And there is that rather sporting-looking
young man, in the green waistcoat and the pink
necktie, grasping by the hand the generally blue
maiden in the gipsy hat under the cliffs –
apparently, of Dover – who thus pours forth his soul:

    Ne'er doubt, fair maid, the vows I make,
    A constant heart no time can shake;
    Rather than cause it e'er to wander,
    Time, the true heart, makes grow fonder.

Our poet is evidently of a serious turn, and
given to the sentimental and the pathetic;
finds it difficult to screw himself down to the
low level of the comic. There is quite a touch
of the pastoral style in the opening line of his
satire upon the lady in the spoon bonnet:

      Tell me, gentle lady fair,
      Why such ugly things you wear.
      Surely all your wits are fled,
      A spoon to carry on your head.

He is almost didactic in his severity upon
the gentleman with the scrubbing-brush beard,
who is admiring himself in the looking-glass: