or other of the clerks there-they does it everywhere by turns, sir-turn and turn about."

Figg is as positive as he is explicit and oracular upon this point, and no doubt his assertion is true. As he finishes speaking, he looks complacently at his top-boots, and flaps a little dust from them with a snuff-coloured handkerchief. We bid him good-day, and saunter on into Pump Court, wondering in our own mind what upon earth can induce Figg, who in noway differs from his brethren of the knot on other days, to array his nether extremities in breeches and top-boots on Sunday, as he has done every Sunday for these twenty years past. Pump Court offers no solution to the mystery-it is a particularly dull, old-world, and drabby area, silent just now as a crypt-paved with cracked and crumbling flags, each one of which looks as though it were the monumental stone over some buried life. How many hungry litigants have worn hollows in these irresponsive witnesses of their fears and their despairs! and how many more shall pace them in distracted thought under the anguish of hope deferred? "Tong!" goes the bell from the old church, where the grim templars lie cross-legged on the cold stones; and at the same moment comes the boom of the organ, telling us that in another minute the congregation will be upon us, and the sleeping echoes awake once more. We are startled out of our reverie, and into Fleet Street, where already the publicans are opening their doors and windows, and the dead calm of Sunday morning in the City wakes up into the current of common life.

PATERNOSTER ROW AND MAGAZINE-DAY.

PATERNOSTER Row, which, as most people know, stands north of St. Paul's Churchyard, began its career as a straggling row or rank of dumpy wooden houses, inhabited by the turners of beads and rosaries, and the writers of Paternosters, Aves, and Creeds, in days prior to the invention of printing. Its proximity to the metropolitan church, and its central position in the capital, made it a desirable situation for the scribes and the artificers of those days, whose occupation it was to supply the literature and the machinery of devotion. The Row then consisted but of a single rank of houses, looking out upon old St. Paul's Church; and the sale of its merchandise, we may reasonably conclude, augmented or declined with the religious fervour of the people, and with the periodical celebration of ecclesiastical ceremonies.

When the Reformation came, and England grew Protestant, the beads and the rosaries, the Paternosters, Aves, and Creeds-and the poor friars of the religious houses, "white, black, and grey, with all their trumpery," had to decamp without beat of drum. In their place came a swarm of mercers, silkmen, lacemen, and tirewomen and seamstresses. Church-goers no longer wanted beads and breviaries, but handsome Sunday garments-and the new tenants of the Row administered to the necessities of a new species of devotion, not much better, it is to be feared, than the old. The Row now began to grow famous as a market for rich velvets and stuffs. It was here the gentry of the court of Charles II. came a-shopping in their equipages; and by

this time the Row must have become, to some extent, what it is at the present day-a narrow lane, unsuitable for the passage of vehicles-for we read that the thoroughfare was often blocked up by the carriages of the court ladies. Pepys records, in his diary (1660), that he came here to buy "moyre for a morning waistcoat;" and again, in 1662, that he came on foot to purchase "satin for a petticoat for his wife against the queen's coming."

But the mercers, lacemen, &c., had not the whole place to themselves. A century before Pepys bought his wife's satin petticoat, one Henry Denham, a bookseller, had opened shop at the sign of the Star, and had written on his sign-board the motto: Os homini sublime dedit. It was not, however, until the reign of Queen Anne that the booksellers in a body removed to the Row from Little Britain. From that time to this, the reputation of the Row has spread further and wider through the world with each revolving year; and for many generations past, the well-known name has been familiar to the eye of every man, woman, and child of the realm to whom a book is either a necessary or a luxury of life. It is not our purpose to trace the history of the commerce in books, of which the Row is the great centre, and where as many as five millions of volumes have been sold in a year by a single firm. To do that, would require more space than we have at command, and would involve researches and calculations that might perplex and appal a Bidder. The Row is fed, now-a-days, by fifty thousand authors at least, and a thousand or so of steam-presses; and what the amount of printed paper may be which is turned into it and turned out of it in the course of a year, let those declare, if there be such, who have the means of judging. There are firms there of above a century's standing, who might throw some light on that subject, if they chose; and to them we leave it preferring, on the present occasion, to introduce the reader to Paternoster Row under its existing aspect, and contemplate

at leisure such of its activities as may help us to some general idea of its way of life.

The aspect of the Row, enter it from what quarter you may-and you may take your choice of very numerous different entrances-is pretty sure to disappoint the expectations of a stranger. To say the best of it, it is but a narrow, curving, irregular thoroughfare, leading from near Ludgate Hill to Cheapside-a lane of brick and mortar, with erections of all dates and all styles and no styles of building—with a foot-pavement scarcely wide enough for two individuals to pass each other, and a roadway through a good part of which vehicles can pass only in single file. The shops, which, with the exception of two or three, are all those of publishers, have a business rather than an attractive air, and except on certain periodical occasions, are not much troubled by the rush of customers. Into this lane, a number of narrower lanes, of courts and alleys, disembogue themselves—some leading to Newgate Market, whose shambles are in unpleasant contiguity to the rears of the houses on the northern sidee-some into St. Paul's Churchyard, some into Newgate Street and Warwick Square, and some to nowhere particular, only to a cul-de-sac, which sends the wanderer back again into the Row. At the west end, in a small dusty square, accessible through close-paved courts, leading by a byway to Ludgate Hill, stands a noble sycamore of perhaps a century's growth, whose leaves rustle pleasantly in hot summer-time, and whose leafless boughs in the winter are the parliament of the sparrows of the ward, which are observed to sit there in deafening convocation daily during the short half-hour of winter's twilight.

Viewed, then, in connection with the immediate neighbourhoods of Ludgate Hill, Cheapside, and Newgate Street, which, from early morn to midnight, are resounding with the continuous roar and rumble of wheels, the Row is, in general, a remarkably quiet place. The fever of business is inter

mittent, and the crises occur only at regular intervals. During the quiet times, the place is frequented chiefly by two classes: the publishers, their booksellers and their agents and literary men. There is a good deal of gossipping in the shops among clerical-looking gentlemen in white ties, and much lounging and reading of newspapers and magazines over the counter among clerks and shopmen. Now and then, the old blind fiddler strays into the Row, and tunes up a sentimental air, followed by rapid variations, in a masterly style, to whom his regular patrons are not slow in awarding the customary meed of coin. Anon comes a brass band of Germans, who draw up in rank on the kerb, intoning the patriotic harmonies of Fatherland, and who, in their turn, gather a shower of coppers, cunningly aimed from upper stories into the open throat of French horn or ophicleide by publishers' clerks in want of more profitable amusement. Here and there, a collector, bag on shoulder, strolls from shop to shop, to make up some extra parcel for a country customer-or a hungry bookworm lounges from window to window, to catch a glimpse of some new work; but there are no great signs of activity-except it be the sudden taking to his heels of the bookworm aforesaid, from a sudden effluvium that hits him clean off the pavement, and sends him staggering down the nearest court; and which proceeds from a tallow-melting establishment, as appropriately fixed as would be a pig in an Opera-box, in the very focus and centre of the literary world. Once a week, however, the Row puts on a vivacious look, and bustle and business are the order of the hour. By post-time on Friday, the weekly papers march off in sacks, bags, and parcels to the post-office, and of these the Row furnishes a liberal quota. The procuring of the papers from the publishers of each, which is often attended with no small amount of squabbling and delay-the packing for agents-the addressing to private customers-the invoicing and final bundling