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Reader, if you wish to make a figure among the Chelts and be thought any thing of, you will, of course, domicile at the Plough; but if your object is a knowledge of life, social conversation, a great variety of character, and a never-failing fund of mirth and anecdote, join the gentleman travellers who congregate at the Bell or the Fleece, where you will meet with merry fellows, choice viands, good wine, excellent beds, and a pretty chambermaid into the bargain. Your commercial man is often a fellow of infinite jest, a travelling vocabulary of provincial knowledge, and a faithful narrator of the passing events of the time. Who can speak of the increasing prosperity, or calculate upon the falling interests of a town, so well as your flying man of business 1 The moment he enters a new place he expects the landlord to be ready, cap in hand, to welcome him; he first sees his horse into a stall, and lectures the ostler upon the art of rubbing him down—orders boots to bring in his travelling bags or his driving box, and bids the waiter send the chambermaid to show him his bed-room—grumbles that it is too high up, has no chimney in the apartment, or is situate over the kitchen or the tap-room—swears a tremendous oath that he will order his baggage to be taken to the next house, and frightens the poor girl into the giving him one of the best bed-apartments, usually reserved for the coffee-room company. Returning below, he abuses the waiter for not giving him his letters, that have been waiting his arrival a week, before he went up stairs—directs boots to be ready to make the circuit of the town with him after dinner, carrying his pattern-books, perhaps half a hundred-weight of Birmingham wares, brass articles, or patterns of coffin furniture; and having thus succeeded in putting the whole house into confusion, only to let them know that the Brummagem gentleman has arrived on his annual visit to the Chelts, with a new stock of every thing astonishing in the brass line, he places himself down at a side table, to answer to his principals for being some days later on his march than they had concluded—remits a good sum in bills and acceptances, and adds thereunto a sheet of orders, that will suffice to keep the firm in good temper for a week to come: sometimes, indeed, the postscript contains a hint of an expected "whereas," or strong suspicions of an act of insolvency, but always couched in the most consolatory terms, hoping the dividend will turn out to be better than present circumstances might lead them to expect. In his visits to his customers he is the most courteous, obliging fellow imaginable; there is no trouble he thinks too much if he is likely to obtain his last account and a fresh order; then, too, his generosity is unbounded: he invites the tradesman to take wine with him at his inn, inquires kindly after all the family, hopes business is thriving, makes an offer of doing any thing for him along the road, and bows himself and his pattern-cards out of the shop, with as much humility and apparent sense of obligation as the most expert courtier could put on when his sovereign deigns to confer upon him some special mark of his royal favour. It is at his inn alone that his independence breaks forth, and here he often assumes as much consequence as if he was the head of the firm he represents, and always carried about him a plum at least in his breeches pocket. This is a general character, and one, too, formed upon no slight knowledge of commercial men; but with all this, the man of the world will admire them and seek their company; first, that his accommodations are generally better, and the charges not subject to the caprice of the landlord; and, secondly, for the sake of society; for what on earth can be more horrible than to be shut up in a lone room, a stranger in a provincial town, to eat, drink, and pass the cheerless hour, a prey to solitude and ennui?

But there is sometimes a little fastidiousness about these knights of the saddle-bag, in admitting a stranger to hob and nob with them; to prevent a knowledge, therefore, of our pursuits, my friend Bob was instructed, before entering the room, to sink the arts, and if any inquisitive fellow should inquire what line he travelled in, to reply, in the print line; while your humble servant, it was agreed, should represent some firm in the spring trade; and thus armed against suspicion, we boldly marched into the commercial-room just as the assembled group of men of business were sitting down to dinner, hung our hats upon a peg, drew our chairs, uninvited, to the table, fully prepared to feel ourselves at home, and do ample justice to the "bagmen's banquet."

The important preliminary point settled, of whom the duty of chairman devolved on, a situation, as I understood, always filled in a commercial room by the last gentleman traveller who makes it his residence, we proceeded to business. The privilege of finding fault with the dinner, which, by the by, was excellent, is always conceded to the ancients of the fraternity of traders; these gentlemen who, having been half a century upon the road, remember all the previous proprietors of the hotel to the fifteenth or twentieth generation removed, make a point of enumerating their gracious qualities upon such occasions, to keep the living host and representative up to the mark, as they phrase it. For instance—the old buck in the chair, who was a city tea broker, found fault with the fish: "There vas nothing of that ere sort to be had good but at Billingsgate, where all the best fish from all the vorld vas, as he contended, to be bought cheaper as butcher's meat." The result of which remark induced the young wags at the table to finish a very fine brill, without leaving him a taste, while he was abusing it. "This soup is not like friend Birch's," said Mr. Obadiah Pure, a gentleman in the drug line; "it hath a watery and unchristianlike taste with it." "Ay," replied a youngster at the bottom of the table, with whom it appeared to be in request, "I quake for fear while I am eating it, only I know there can be no drugs in it, or you would not find fault with a customer." "Thou art one of the newly imported, friend," replied Mr. Pure, "and art yet like a young bear, with all thy troubles to come." "True," said the wag, "thou may be right, friend; but I shall not be found a bruin with thy materials for all that." This sally put down the drug merchant for the rest of the dinner-time. "You had better take a little fish or soup before they are cold," said the chairman, to a bluff-looking beef-eater at his back, who was arranging his papers and samples. "Sir, I never eat warm wittals, drink hot liquors, wear a great coat, or have my bed warmed." "The natural heat of your constitution, I suppose, excuses you," said I, venturing upon a joke. "Sir, you had better heat your natural meal, while it is hot, without attempting to heat other people's tempers," was the reply; to which Bob retorted, by saying, "It was quite clear the gentleman was not mealy-mouthed." "This beef smells a little of Hounslow Heath," said a jeweller's gentleman, on my right. "Why so, sir?" was inquired by one who knew him. "Because it has hung rather too long to be sightly." "You should not have left out the chains in that joke, Sam," said his friend; "they would have linked it well together, and sealed the subject." "Who takes port?" inquired the chairman. "I must sherry directly after dinner, gentlemen," said one. "What," retorted the company, "boxing the wine bin! committing treason, by making a sovereign go farther than he is required by law. Fine him, Mr. Chairman." "Gentlemen, it is not in my power; he is a bottle conjuror, I assure you, 'a good man and true;' he only retires to bleed a patient, and will return instanter." "Happy to take a glass of wine with you, sir." "What do you think of that port, sir?" "Excellent." "Ay, I knew you would say so; the house of Barnaby Blackstrap, Brothers, and Company, of Upper Thames Street, have always been famous for selling wines of the choicest vintage. Do me the honour, sir, of putting a card of ours in your pocket: I sent this wine into this house in Jennings's time, for the grand dinner, when the first stone of the new rooms over the way was laid, and John Kelly, the proprietor, took the chair. You are lucky, sir, in meeting me here; they always pull out an odd bottle from the family bin, marked A—1, when I visit them." "Yes, and some odd sort of wine at any other time," grumbled out a queer-looking character at a side table opposite. "That's nothing but spleen, Mr. Sable," said the knight of the ruby countenance: "you and I have met occasionally at this house together now for three and twenty years; and although I never come a journey without taking an order from them, I thank heaven, I never knew you to receive one yet: many a dead man have we seen in this room, but none of them requiring a coffin plate to tell their age, and very few of them that were like to receive the benefit of resurrection." "I shall book you inside, Mr. Blackstrap,'' replied Sable, "for joking on my articles of trade, which is contrary to the established usage of a commercial room." "Do any thing you like but bury me," said the bon vivant." Gentlemen, as chairman, it is my duty to put an end to all grave subjects. Will you be kind enough to dissect that turkey?" "I don't see the bee's wing in this port, Mr. Blackstrap, that you are bouncing about," said a London traveller to a timber-merchant. "No, sir," said the humorist, "it is not to be seen until you are a deal higher in spirits; the film of the wing is seldom discernible in such mahogany-coloured wine as this." "Sir, I blush like rose wood at your impertinence." "Ay, sir, and you'll soon be as red as logwood, or as black as ebony, if you will but do justice to the bottle," was the reply. "There is no being cross-grained with you," said the timber-merchant. "Not unless you cut me," retorted Blackstrap, "and you are not sap enough for that." "Gentlemen," continued the facetious wine-merchant, "if we do not get a little fruit, I shall think we have not met with our dessert; and although there may be some among us whose principals are worth a plum, there are very few of their representatives, I suspect, who will offer any objections to my reasons." Thus pleasantly apostrophised, the fruit made its appearance, and with it a fresh supply of the genuine Oporto, which our merry companion, Blackstrap, called "his old particular." One of his stories, relative to a joke played off upon the Bolton trotters, by his friend Sable, the travelling undertaker, is too good to be lost. In Lancashire the custom of hoaxing is called trotting, and in many instances, particularly at Bolton, is still continued, and has frequently been played off upon strangers with a ruinous success. Sable had, it would appear, taken up his quarters at a commercial inn, and, as is usual with travellers, joined the tradesmen in the smoking room at night to enjoy his pipe, and profit, perhaps, by introduction in the way of business. The pursuit of the undertaker and dealer in coffin furniture was no sooner made generally known, than it was unanimously agreed to trot him, by giving him various orders for articles in his line, which none of the parties had any serious intention of paying for or receiving. With this view, one ordered a splendid coffin for himself, and another one for his wife; a third gave instructions for an engraved plate and gilt ornaments; and a fourth chose to order an elegant suite of silver ornaments to decorate the last abode of frail mortality: in this way the company were much amused with the apparent unsuspecting manner of Sable, who carefully noted down all their orders, and pledged himself to execute them faithfully. The Bolton people did not fail to circulate this good joke, as they then thought it, among their neighbours, and having given fictitious names, expected to have had additional cause for exultation when the articles arrived; but how great was their surprise and dismay, when in a short time every order came, directed properly to the person who had given it! Coffins and coffin-plates, silk shrouds and velvet palls, and all the expensive paraphernalia of the charnel-house were to be seen carried about from the waggon-office in Bolton, to be delivered at the residences of the principal inhabitants. Many refused to receive these mementoes of their terrestrial life, and others denied having ever ordered the same. Sable, however, proved himself too fast a trotter for the Bolton people; for having, by the assistance of the waiter, obtained the true description of his customers on the night of the joke, and finding they were most of them wealthy tradesmen, he very wisely determined to humour the whim, and execute the orders given, and in due course of time insisted upon payment for the same. Thus ended the story of the Bolton trotters, which our merry companion concluded, by observing, that it put an end to sporting, in that way, for some time; and by the chagrin it caused to many of the trottees, distanced them in this life, and sent them off the course in a galloping consumption.{1} "There's honour for you," said Sable, "civilized a

1 A Bolton definition.—When the Bolton Canal was first
pro-posed, the Athenians (for that Bolton is the Athens of
Lancashire no one can doubt) could not well understand how
boats were to be raised above the level of the sea. A lock
to them was as incom-prehensible as Locke on the Human
Understanding. A celebrated member of a celebrated trotting
club was amongst the number of those who could not
comprehend the mystery. Unwilling to appear ignorant upon a
question which formed the common topic of conversation, he
applied to a scientific gentleman in the neighbourhood for
an accurate description of a lock. It happened that the man
of science had on one occasion been a trottee, and was
glad to have an opportunity of retaliation. "A lock," said
he, "is a quantity of sawdust congealed into boards, which,
being let down into the water in a perpendicular slope-
level, raises it to the declivity of the sea above!"—" Eh?"
said the Athenian, "what dun yo' say?" The gentleman
repeated his description, and the worthy Boltonian recorded
every word in the tablet of his memory. Sometime afterwards
he had the honour of dining with some worshipful brothers of
the quorum, men as profoundly ignorant of the law as any of
the unpaid magistracy need to be, but who, having seen
canals, knew well enough what locks were. Our Athenian took
an early opportunity of adverting to the proposed "cut," and
introduced his newly-acquired learning in the following
terms: "Ah! Measter Fletcher, it's a foine thing a lock;
yo' know'n I loike to look into them theere things; a lock
is a perpendicular slop level, which, being let into the
sea, is revealed into boards, that raises it to the
declivity of the sea above!"—As it is the province and
privilege of the ignorant to laugh at a greater degree of
ignorance than their own, it may be supposed that their
worships enjoyed a hearty laugh at the expense of their
Attic brother.

whole district of English barbarians by one action, and, what is more, they have never ventured to trot with any one of our fraternity since."

The conversation now took a turn relative to the affairs of trade; and if any one had been desirous of knowing the exact degree of solvency in which the whole population of the county of Gloucester was held by these flying merchants and factors, they might easily have summed up the estimate from the remarks of the company. They were, however, a jovial party; and my friend Bob and myself had rarely found ourselves more pleasantly circumstanced, either as regarded our social comforts, or the continued variety of new character with which the successive speakers presented us. As the evening approached our numbers gradually diminished, some to pursue their journeys, and others to facilitate the purposes of trade. The representative of the house of Blackstrap and Co., his friend Sable, the timber merchant, our inviter the bookseller, and the two interlopers, remained fixed as fate to the festive board, until the chairman, and scarce any one of the company, could clearly define, divide, and arrange the exact arithmetical proportions of the dinner bill. After a short cessation of hostilities, during which our commercial friends despatched their London letters, and Bob and the English Spy, to escape the suspicion of not having any definable pursuit, emigrated to the High Street; we returned to our quarters, and found the whole party debating upon a proposition of the bon vivants, to have another bottle, and make a night of it by going to the theatre at half price; a question that was immediately carried, nemine contradicente. Mr. Margin, our esteemed companion, who represented the old established house of Sherwood and Co., was known to sing a good stave, and what was still more attractive, was himself a child of song—one of the inspired of the nine, who, at the Anacreontic Club, held in Ivy Lane, would often amuse the society with an original chant; "whose fame," as Blackstrap expressed it, "had extended itself to the four corners of the island, wherever the sporting works of Sherwood and Co., or the travelled histories of the Messrs. Longmans, have found readers and admirers." "Gentlemen," said Mr. Margin, "my songs are all of a local nature; whims written to amuse a meeting of the trade for a dinner at the Albion or the London, when the booksellers congregate together to buy copyrights, or sell at a reduced price the refuse of their stock. But, such as it is, you shall have it instanter."

ALL THE BOOKSELLERS;
A NEW SONG, BY A LONDON TRAVELLER.
Tune—Family Pride—Irish air.
First, Longmans are famous for travels,
Will Sherwood for sporting and fun,
Old Ridgway the science unravels
How politic matters are done.
The ponderous tomes of deep learning,
The heavy, profound, and the flat,
By Baldwin and Cradock's discerning,
Are cheaper by half to come at.
Baines deals out to methodist readers
Cant, piously strung into rhyme;
While Rivingtons, 'gainst the seceders,
With church and king Hatchard will chime.
John Murray's the lords' own anointed,
I mean not indeed to blaspheme,
But the peers have him solely appointed
To sell what their highnesses scheme.

Colburn defies Day and Martin
To beat him with " Real Japan;"
If puffing will sell books, 'tis certain,
He'll rival the bookselling clan.
Catechisms for miss and for master,
For ladies who're fond oft, romance,
Sheriff Whittaker publishes faster
Than booksellers' porters can dance.
Operatives, mechanics, combiners,
Knight and Lacey will publish for you;
They'll tickle ye out of your shiners,
By teaching the power o' the screw.
An Architect looks out for Taylor,
A General Egerton seeks;
Tommy Tegg at the trade is a railer,
But yet for a slice of it sneaks.
Richardson furnishes India
With all books from Europe she buys;
Near St. Paul's, in Old Harris's window,
The juveniles look for a prize.
Cadell is Scotch Ebony's factor,
Collecting the news for Blackwood;
John Miller 's the man for an actor,
America 's done him some good.
The Newmans of fam'd Leadenhall
In very old novels abound;
While Kelly, respected by all,
As Sheriff of London is found.
Will Simpkin supplieth the trade
From his office in Stationers' Court;
And Stockdale too much cash has made
By publishing Harriette 's report.