The splendid shops must strike a stranger with amazement, although far inferior to many which have lately been built at "the West End:" at every two or three strides we take along the frontage, we pass houses for which two or three hundred a year rent is paid; half-a-dozen houses produce yearly nearly double the income of numbers of the foreign nobles, and many an old lady and gentleman live retired in the quiet suburbs on the rent derived from a single house which stands in this costly thoroughfare. Nearly every floor is a separate department of commerce. Up every flight of stairs which you climb there are attendants in waiting to receive you. Temptation follows temptation--each door but opens into richer scenes; each room is hung with costlier articles; and you stand bewildered, as if entangled amid the mazes of those splendid palaces which figure in the dreams of oriental romance. Silks from almost every land in the sunny south, shawls woven in the rainbow looms of India, are mingled with the products of flowery Cashmere, and blended with the gaudy plumage of birds of paradise; and vases, emblazoned with the dazzling dyes of China, that glitter amid piles of purple and green and crimson velvets hemmed with silver and gold, and hangings which might have swept their costly fringes upon the cedar floors of Haroun al Raschid, while the weight of gold and silver seems heavy enough to bow down the windows. Let the uninitiated be careful how they stand, whilst loitering and looking in through those costly plate-glass windows upon such gorgeous productions, for upward and downward, all day long, the rapid current of human life is ever rolling in living eddies, from east to west, and jostling, in its mighty strength, every idle object it meets with on its way; and, in this ever-moving ocean, each human wave has its allotted mission, each tiny ripple "its destined end and aim." How different from the London of the present day--from the splendid streets and shops which stretch from Temple-Bar to Whitechapel, and westward from those ancient City gates to a land of theatres, squares, and palace-like buildings--were the old narrow streets, with their high houses and overhanging gables, that rose tier above tier, their huge projecting signs, even at noon-day making a dim dreamy kind of twilight; while the cry of "What do you lack?" drawled forth by either master or apprentice, as they paced to and fro before their open-fronted and booth-like shops, gave a drowsy kind of murmur to the close ancient neighbourhood of the old City. How different from what we now see!