es, fenders and street-door knockers,
fire-irons, wearing apparel and bedding, a hall-lamp, and a room-door.
Imagine, in addition to this incongruous mass, a black doll in a white
frock, with two faces--one looking up the street, and the other looking
down, swinging over the door; a board with the squeezed-up inscription
'Dealer in marine stores,' in lanky white letters, whose height is
strangely out of proportion to their width; and you have before you
precisely the kind of shop to which we wish to direct your attention.

Although the same heterogeneous mixture of things will be found at all
these places, it is curious to observe how truly and accurately some of
the minor articles which are exposed for sale--articles of wearing
apparel, for instance--mark the character of the neighbourhood. Take
Drury-Lane and Covent-garden for example.

This is essentially a theatrical neighbourhood. There is not a potboy in
the vicinity who is not, to a greater or less extent, a dramatic
character. The errand-boys and chandler's-shop-keepers' sons, are all
stage-struck: they 'gets up' plays in back kitchens hired for the
purpose, and will stand before a shop-window for hours, contemplating a
great staring portrait of Mr. Somebody or other, of the Royal Coburg
Theatre, 'as he appeared in the character of Tongo the Denounced.' The
consequence is, that there is not a marine-store shop in the
neighbourhood, which does not exhibit for sale some faded articles of
dramatic finery, such as three or four pairs of soiled buff boots with
turn-over red tops, heretofore worn by a 'fourth robber,' or 'fifth mob;'
a pair of rusty broadswords, a few gauntlets, and certain resplendent
ornaments, which, if they were yellow instead of white, might be taken
for insurance plates of the Sun Fire-office. There are several of these
shops in the narrow streets and dirty courts, of which there are so many
near the national theatres, and they all have tempting goods of this
description, with the addition, perhaps, of a lady's pink dress covered
with spangles; white wreaths, stage shoes, and a tiara like a tin lamp
reflector. They have been purchased of some wretched supernumeraries, or
sixth-rate actors, and are now offered for the benefit of the rising
generation, who, on condition of making certain weekly payments,
amounting in the whole to about ten times their value, may avail
themselves of such desirable bargains.

Let us take a very different qua