the Jews
hungering and thirsting after bargains. In that peculiar dialect
affected by the ancient people you have the most magnificent offers made.
"My coot friend, have you cot any preakage?" says one. "Cot any old
boots?" says another. "I alvays gives a coot prishe," says a third. And
the seller is surrounded by an eager crowd, as if he had the Koh-i-noor,
and was going to part with it dirt cheap. If you are a buyer, you are
quite as quickly attacked. "Want a new hat?" says one. "Shall I sell
you a coot coat?" says another; and whichever way you turn, you see the
same buying and selling. The cheap jewellery, the china ornaments, the
general wares, are not of the most _recherche_, but of the most popular
character. You may buy a stock close by that will set up all the fairs
in England. Here a seller of crockery ware has come back, and is
disposing of the treasures he has acquired in the course of his travels.
There a woman is discharging a similar miscellaneous cargo. All round
are buyers, examining their goods. Everything here will be made useful.
That bit of old iron will become new; those boots, ruined, as you deemed
them, will be vamped up, and shall dance merrily to accompanying
shillalaghs at Donnybrook fair; that resplendent vest, once the delight
of Belgravia, in a few weeks will adorn Quashie as he serenades his Mary
Blane beneath West Indian moons. Even those bits of waste leather will
be carefully treasured up and converted into a dye that may tint the rich
man's costly robe. Now, you need not wonder why you find
suspicious-looking men and women bargaining with your servants for
left-off clothes, or rags, or plunder of any kind, and you are not
surprised when you hear even out of this dirty trade riches are made, and
the gains are great.

A wit was once asked what he thought of Ireland. "Why," was his answer,
"I never knew before what the people of England did with their cast-off
clothes." A similar remark might be made with regard to Rag Fair. But
we have not yet described the locality. Very dark and very dismal, but
very much inclined to do business, the Exchange, as it is termed, is not
a building of a very gorgeous style of architecture. In its erection the
useful and the economical evidently was considered more than the
beautiful. It seems destitute alike of shape and substance. Mr. Mayhew
says it consists of a plot of ground about an acre in extent; but Mr.
Mayhew has certainly fal