, who yet
understood trade, in proportion to the trade they carried on, as well as
we do, to have tradesmen lay out two-thirds of their fortune in fitting
up their shops.

By fitting up, I do not mean furnishing their shops with wares and goods
to sell--for in that they came up to us in every particular, and perhaps
went beyond us too--but in painting and gilding, fine shelves, shutters,
boxes, glass-doors, sashes, and the like, in which, they tell us now, it
is a small matter to lay out two or three hundred pounds, nay, five
hundred pounds, to fit up a pastry-cook's, or a toy-shop.

The first inference to be drawn from this must necessarily be, that this
age must have more fools than the last: for certainly fools only are
most taken with shows and outsides.

It is true, that a fine show of goods will bring customers; and it is
not a new custom, but a very old one, that a new shop, very well
furnished, goes a great way to bringing a trade; for the proverb was,
and still is, very true, that every body has a penny for a new shop; but
that a fine show of shelves and glass-windows should bring customers,
that was never made a rule in trade till now.

And yet, even now, I should not except so much against it, if it were
not carried on to such an excess, as is too much for a middling
tradesman to bear the expense of. In this, therefore, it is made not a
grievance only, but really scandalous to trade; for now, a young
beginner has such a tax upon him before he begins, that he must sink
perhaps a third part, nay, a half part, of his stock, in painting and
gilding, wainscoting and glazing, before he begins to trade, nay, before
he can open his shop. As they say of building a watermill, two-thirds of
the expense lies under the water; and when the poor tradesman comes to
furnish his shop, and lay in his stock of goods, he finds a great hole
made in his cash to the workmen, and his show of goods, on which the
life of his trade depends, is fain to be lessened to make up his show of
boards, and glass to lay them in.

Nor is this heavy article to be abated upon any account; for if he does
not make a good show, he comes abroad like a mean ordinary fellow, and
nobody of fashion comes to his shop; the customers are drawn away by the
pictures and painted shelves, though, when they come there, they are not
half so well filled as in other places, with goods fit for a trade; and
how, indeed, should it be otherwise? the joiners and paint