We have referred, in an early part of this paper, to the taste for blackamoors, which set in the reign of Charles II., and went on increasing until the middle of the next century, at which time there must have been a very considerable population of negro servants in the metropolis. At first the picturesque natives of the East were pressed into the service of the nobility and gentry, and colour does not appear to have been a _sine quâ non_. Thus we have in the _London Gazette_ of 1688 the following hue-and-cry advertisement:-- Run away from his master, Captain St. Lo, the 21st instant, Obdelah Ealias Abraham, a Moor, swarthy complexion, short frizzled hair, a gold ring in his ear, in a black coat and blew breeches. He took with him a blew Turkish watch-gown, a Turkish suit of clothing that he used to wear about town, and several other things. Whoever brings him to Mr. Lozel's house in Green Street shall have one guinea for his charges. The next advertisement we find also relates to what we must consider an East Indian. The notion of property in these boys seems to have been complete; their masters put their names upon their collars, as they did upon their setters or spaniels:-- A black boy, an Indian, about thirteen years old, run away the 8th instant from Putney, with a collar about his neck with this inscription: 'the Lady Bromfield's black in Lincoln's Inn Fields.' Whoever brings him to Sir Edward Bromfield's at Putney shall have a guinea reward.--_The London Gazette_, 1694. The traffic in African blacks, which commenced towards the end of the seventeenth century, seems to have displaced these eastern servitors towards the end of the century, for henceforth the word negro, blackamoor, or black boy, is invariably used. No doubt the fashion for these negroes and other coloured attendants was derived from the Venetian Republic, the intercourse of whose merchants with Africa and India naturally led to their introduction. Titian and other great painters of his school continually introduced them in their pictures, and our own great bard has for ever associated the Moor with the City in the Sea. In England the negro boys appear to have been considered as much articles of sale as they would have been in the slave-market at Constantinople. In the _Tatler_ of 1709 we find one offered to the public in the following terms:-- A black boy, twelve years of age, fit to wait on a gentleman, to be disposed of at Denis's Coffee-house in Finch Lane, near the Royal Exchange. Again, in the _Daily Journal_ of September 28th, 1728, we light upon another:-- To be sold, a negro boy, aged eleven years. Enquire of the Virginia Coffee-house in Threadneedle Street, behind the Royal Exchange.