in the display of fanciful clocks set in alabastor, or molu, gold and silver, and the richest cut glass lighted by patent lamps at night. The Bookseller exposes copies of the most expensive works in his windows, and the Printsellers those of the best artists. The Undertaker covers his panes with escutcheons, crowns, coronets, and mitres of gold; and contrives to introduce the lid of a little velvet coffin, which is intended to lead the eye to full-sized real ones preparing for the dead.
The Lottery-office-keeper attracts a crowd by numbers of tickets and shares disposed for sale, and always places a paper memento at the elbow, of "No. &c. &c. sold at this office in the last lottery, drawn a prize of 30,000l." Hence the Lucky Office and Only Lucky Office[403:A].
The retailer of Quack Medicines covers every pane of his shop-windows with the bills of different compounders of nostrums, and the angles between the paper and the sashes with transparent vivid colours; and the Proprietors of Newspapers seize upon every battle or capture as fair opportunities for pasting large pieces of paper together, which they inscribe "Sixth edition," &c. &c. and suspend from the top to the bottom of their
casements; while their myrmidons the Newsmen reiterate the "Sixth edition" with distended lungs in the short intervals between the—I had almost said—infernal blasts of their tin trumpets. Let the purchaser, however, beware the Newsman doth not give him a paper or gazette—three weeks old—in the hurry of the moment!
Such are the methods adopted by the London Tradesmen to attract attention, and such the appearance of the lower part of their Houses: indeed, Commodities are now generally used in place of the antient Signs. One of their absurdities deserves reprehension: when a man has a front door between two windows, or a door on the right side of a window, he will have his name over the door, and his business on the friezes of the windows; for instance,
| Window | Door | Window |
| Goldsmith and | Brown | Jeweller, &c. |
instead of "Brown, goldsmith and jeweller." The nonsense produced in this way is sometimes incredibly ludicrous. I once observed the words "Preston, Nightman, and Rubbish carted," so placed that they conveyed an idea of a partnership "Preston and Rubbish."
