"Forasmuch as his majesty hath received information of the unseemliness and deformity appearing in Cheapside, by reason that divers men of mean trades have shops amongst the goldsmiths, which disorder it is his majesty's express pleasure to have reformed. . . . . It was accordingly ordered that the two lord chief-justices, with such other judges as they shall think meet to call unto them, shall consider what statutes or laws there are to enforce the goldsmiths to plant themselves for the use of their trade in Cheapside," &c. The citizens, who probably imagined that the king, who had other things to think of, might leave them to manage their shops, took no notice of the order in council, but went on letting their premises to whom they chose. After the lapse of seven years comes another peremptory missive, charging the lord mayor and aldermen with disobedience in not bringing the goldsmiths living dispersed in the city to seat themselves in Cheapside or Lombard Street, and commanding them forthwith to turn out all other tradesmen to make room for the goldsmiths, and to commit such as shall prove refractory to prison, until they do conform themselves. "And in the meanwhile," concludes this strange document, "we are, by his majesty's command, to require and charge you forthwith to cause all such shops as are not goldsmiths, and have been taken or opened either in Cheapside or Lombard Street since our said letters, to be presently shut up, and not be permitted to be opened till further order from this board, &c.-24 May, 1637." Fearing this arbitrary order might not be of sufficient force to compel the citizens to obedience, the King followed it up by a thundering decree from the Star-Chamber, which threatens to imprison the aldermen of the wards if they shall neglect to execute his majesty's commands. The magistrates of the city seem to have cared little either for privy-council or Star-Chamber, judging at least from the appearance of a third order addressed to the lord mayor and aldermen, reciting the

Y

former two, and complaining of the contempt and disrespect with which they had been treated. What effect this last message had upon the corporation does not appear; whether the "boke-seller, the drugster, the girdler," &c., who had dared to mingle with the goldsmiths, and open their shops in spite of his majesty and the Star-Chamber, were compelled to cry peccavi, and beat a retreat, we cannot say, but are inclined to think they kept their ground. The king was at this crisis embroiled with his subjects on the question of ship-money, and the citizens of London were especially sore and rebellious, having been rated at twenty ships, and petitioned in vain to have the number reduced one-half. The affair of the shops vanished before the affair of the ships-and of that, at present, it is not our business to treat.

By this time London had increased to more than double the size it was when Thomas Wood built his celebrated shops, and that in spite of various enactments which had been passed to prevent the extension of the city beyond what were deemed its natural boundaries—the walls. The shops, in spite of acts of parliament to the contrary, had burgeoned forth of the city towards the Strand in one direction, and towards Holborn in another. As early as the beginning of the first Charles's reign, we find shops and stalls in Westminster Hall. These were in the hands of booksellers, law-stationers, and sempstresses, and the profits (rents?) of them belonged by right of office to the warden of the Fleet. There is an entry in Laud's Diary, to the effect that, on Sunday the 20th of February, 1630-1, "the Hall was found on fire by the burning of the little shops or stalls kept therein;" and we know, from other sources, that this retail traffic was carried on among the lawyers and their clients up, at least, to the commencement of the eighteenth century. So far as we know, the Westminster Hall Bazaar is the first notable example upon record of the system of projecting the elements of commerce into places of public

resort, which is the most characteristic feature of London

retail trade in our day.

--

The bickerings between Charles and the citizens on the subject of the goldsmiths' shops were hardly ended, when the king-doubtless for a considerationgave them a charter, in right of which they were to enjoy certain privileges, and to levy certain fees and tolls. One clause of this charter, which bears date 1638, throws some light upon the matter of shops. It runs thus;-" And further, we do give and grant to the said mayor and commonalty and citizens of the said city and their successors, that it may and shall be lawful to the citizens of the same city, and any of them for the time being, to expose and hang in and over the streets and ways and alleys of the said city, and suburbs of the same, signs and posts of signs affixed to their houses and shops, for the better finding out such citizens' dwellings, shops, arts, and occupations, without impediment, molestation, or interruption of us, our heirs or successors, or any officer or minister whatsoever of us, our heirs or successors." In those days the houses of London were but partially or irregularly numbered, and in many districts were not numbered at all. Signs were therefore necessary, as distinguishing marks, and that they were very generally used long before the date of this charter, we have abundant evidence in the imprints of old books, and the allusions of old writers, dramatic and other. It is very possible that they might have become a nuisance from projecting too far into the public way, and that the right of the shopkeepers to maintain them may have been disputed by persons who were or fancied themselves aggrieved. This clause of the charter legalises them, and it is noteworthy that it says nothing as to their size or the rate of projection over the

causeway.

After the great fire, which destroyed nearly the whole of the city north of the Thames, within the walls, the shops

speedily advanced into the suburbs. We have no record of any particular splendour or magnificence attached to them, but they became infinitely more numerous; and when the city rose from its ashes, though it monopolised the wholesale trade, it found a formidable rival in general commerce outside the walls. The shops continued to be distinguished by their signs down to a very recent period. We learn from Hogarth's pictures how very plentiful and how bulky they were. In the plate illustrating Hudibras, entitled "The Burning of the Rump," the view is of Fleet Street within Temple Bar, which obstruction appears precisely as it does at present, with the addition of three traitors' heads stuck on the top of it; and the ponderous signs are seen projecting over the roadway in a manner that would not be tolerated for an hour in modern London. In the opening part of his career, Hogarth painted signs for the shopkeepers, and thought it no discredit that his works should be appropriated to a useful purpose.

Notwithstanding that the English have been so long a nation of shopkeepers, it was reserved for the living generation to make the grandest discoveries in the science of shopkeeping. If the reader would know in what these discoveries consist, let him contrast the present appearance of Oxford Street, Holborn, the Strand, or Cheapside, or any other frequented thoroughfare, with what it was at the termination of the last war, before the invention of gas, or the improvements in the manufacture of plate-glass which rendered it available for the shopkeeper's purpose. And, to make the contrast more effective, let the comparison be made after sunset on a winter-day. The gloomy street in which a few blinking oil-lamps just sufficed to render the darkness visible the narrow shop-window, with its panes of bulging glass, twenty inches by twelve, lighted by a couple of tallow candles or an argand-lamp-the shop-door closed to keep out the cold air; and the one, or perhaps two, guardians of

the counter comfortably ensconced in the room beyond, waiting the information of the bell which rings a loud peal when a customer enters-such was the aspect of many a business thoroughfare in the year when Waterloo was fought. Now, the departure of the day is the herald of a light such as the sun never darts into the nooks and crannies of traffic: broad streams of gas flash like meteors into every corner of the wealth-crammed mart-from which, it may be but one invisible wall of solid crystal separates the passenger, who might easily walk through it but for the burnished metalguard which meets him breast high. If he enters to purchase, he is met at the door by a master of the ceremonies, who escorts him to the precise spot where what he seeks awaits him in the charge of a sort of genius of the lamp, one of a numerous band, whose sole purpose in life it is to gratify his wishes. He walks over rich carpets, in which his feet sink as though upon a meadow-sward; and he may contemplate his portrait at full length in half-a-dozen mirrors, while that pair of gentlemen's kids at 2s. 10d. is being swaddled in tissue paper, and that remnant of change in the vulgar metal of which coal-scuttles are made, and the very existence of which the immortal Brummell felt bound to ignore, is being decently interred in a sort of vellum sarcophagus ere it is presented to his acceptance.

Fifty years ago, by far the greater portion of the retailshops in London were small establishments easily manageable by one person. The proprietor in most cases was his own manager, and attended personally behind the counter to the wants of his customers. The race of shopmen were hardly one-fourth as numerous as they are at present-and the early-closing movement had not been heard of, because lateshopping, except on Saturday nights, was not a prevailing practice. Great as is the alteration which has taken place. in the size and aspect of our shops, perhaps the metamorphosis which has also taken place, or rather which is now in