inkstands, picture-frames, boxes, caddies, medallions, and what-not that is useful and ornamental, in addition to shoe-soles with a propensity to adhere to hot iron, and betray by deeply indented gutters the impress of any new bright-topped fender on which they have chanced to trespass—all, all, are offerings at the shrine of good St. Valentine; how, when, and where, we have yet to see. One peep behind these plate-glassed drop scenes—one visit to the toy-shop—it is an event—a circumstance to be chronicled—even the quiet, mild, and self-possessed proprietress of all the wealth of fun and fashion, use and ornament, and zoology, from the rocking-horse down to the Chinese spider, and Noah’s ark to lady-birds, for once looks heated and tired; and one feels impelled to cheer the kind-hearted, gentle matron, by reminding her, that her toil will be repaid tenfold, by pleasant thoughts of the myriad shouts of welcome and heartfelt glee that, ere long, will have been hymned forth in praise of the perfection of her taste. Her labours and toils would seem scarcely to surpass those of her purchasers. The perplexity and labyrinth of doubt and difficulty they find themselves in is truly pitiable; the annual return of a festival when every body, from grandpapa and grandmamma to baby bo, is expected to receive and give some offering commemorative of the season, causes, in time, a considerable difficulty in the choice of gifts, and added to the mystifications of memory as to who has what? and what hasn’t who? produces a perfect bewilderment. The fluctuations between dominoes, bats and traps, dolls, la gràce, draughts, chess, rocks of Scilly, German tactics, fox and geese, printing machines, panoramas, puzzles, farmy-ards, battledores, doll’s houses, compasses, knitting cases, and a myriad others, seem interminable—but an end must come, and the purchaser and seller find rest. But all this toil is but the prelude to the grand act of the drama; Valentine’s eve arrived, the play begins in earnest. The streets swarm with carriers, and baskets laden with treasures—bang, bang, bang go the knockers, and away rushes the banger, depositing first upon the door-step some package from the basket of stores—again and again at intervals, at every door to which a missive is addressed, is the same repeated till the baskets are empty. Anonymously St. Valentine presents his gifts, labelled only with “St. Valentine’s” love, and “Good morrow, Valentine.”