s of dressing-cases, desks, work-boxes, inkstands, and
_portfeuilles_, usurp the place of lawful mercery, and haberdashery for
the time being yields place to stationery, perfumery, _bijouterie_, and
cutlery, proclaim the triumphs of his reign in their midst. But supreme
above all, are the glories that the toy-shops display, from the gay
balcony-fronted repository for all the choicest inventions science,
skill, or wit can devise, at once to please the fancy, help the brain,
tax the ingenuity of childhood, or dazzle the eye of babyhood, downwards
through the less _recherche_, but scarcely less thronged marts, a grade
below in price and quality, to the very huckster's stall or apple booth,
that shall for the time being add its quota of penny whips, tin trumpets,
and long-legged, brittle-jointed, high-combed Dutch ladies, whose
proportions exhibit any thing but the contour usually described as a
"Dutch build." Nor these alone--the shoemaker's, with its newly-acquired
treasures of gutta percha knick-knacks, flower-pots, card-trays,
inkstands, picture-frames, boxes, caddies, medallions, and what-not that
is useful and ornamental, in addition to shoe-soles with a propensity to
adhere to hot iron, and betray by deeply indented gutters the impress of
any new bright-topped fender on which they have chanced to trespass--all,
all, are offerings at the shrine of good St. Valentine; how, when, and
where, we have yet to see.

One peep behind these plate-glassed drop scenes--one visit to the
toy-shop--it is an event--a circumstance to be chronicled--even the
quiet, mild, and self-possessed proprietress of all the wealth of fun and
fashion, use and ornament, and zoology, from the rocking-horse down to
the Chinese spider, and Noah's ark to lady-birds, for once looks heated
and tired; and one feels impelled to cheer the kind-hearted, gentle
matron, by reminding her, that her toil will be repaid tenfold, by
pleasant thoughts of the myriad shouts of welcome and heartfelt glee
that, ere long, will have been hymned forth in praise of the perfection
of her taste.

Her labours and toils would seem scarcely to surpass those of her
purchasers. The perplexity and labyrinth of doubt and difficulty they
find themselves in is truly pitiable; the annual return of a festival
when every body, from grandpapa and grandmamma to baby bo, is expected to
receive and give some offering commemorative of the season, causes, in
time, a considerable difficulty