Very curious are these old arcades, which are as interesting to the antiquarian as they are convenient for a quiet lounge to ladies and others engaged in shopping. They occupy the greatest part of both sides of Eastgate-street, and the upper parts of both sides of Watergate-street and Bridge-street. Those in Northgate-street are more irregular, only one side, commonly called Shoemakers’-row, being used as a regular thoroughfare. Their appearance, both interior and exterior, is extremely singular. They form a gallery, occupying the front floor of each house, parallel with the streets below, and are approached by flights of steps, placed at convenient distances, in addition to those by which they are entered and quitted at each end. The passenger walks over the shops on a level with the street, and under the first floor of the dwelling-houses; and thus two lines of shops are erected in one front. The rows are kept in excellent repair, and form the chief promenade of the citizens. To strangers they cannot fail to prove an object of curiosity. The shops in the rows are generally considered the best situations for retail traders; but those on the southern side of Eastgate-street and the eastern side of Bridge-street have a decided preference. Shops let here at high rents, and are in never-failing request; and there are no parts of the city which have undergone such rapid or extensive improvements. In the sixteenth century the rows appear not to have exceeded 6 feet in height and 10 in width, with clumsy wooden rails towards the street, and large oaken pillars, supporting transverse beams and brackets, on which rested the houses over head, formed of wood and plaster, so far overhanging the street, that in some places the upper floors of opposite houses nearly met. Nearly the whole of the buildings of this description are now taken down; and in rebuilding care has been taken to raise and widen the rows, and to place iron railings towards the street in place of the wooden posts formerly used. The shops in the rows present a very different appearance to that of about sixty years ago; then, as Hemingway says, “the fronts were all _open_ to the row in two or three compartments, according to their size; and at night were closed by large hanging shutters fixed on hinges, and fastened in the daytime by hooks to the ceiling of the row.” At present these rows are “capable of supplying all the real demands of convenience and the artificial calls of luxury, mental and corporeal, presenting a cluster of drapers, clothiers, jewellers, booksellers, &c., as respectable as the kingdom can produce.” {50} The origin and cause of the rows has furnished matter for much curious investigation; and many conflicting conjectures have been propounded respecting them. The subject is involved in much obscurity; and, in the absence of any positive data, we are not able to take higher ground than the probabilities of the case. It has been alleged that they