sant refreshing preparation, found, upon experience, to be the highest restorative that either food or physic affords; for, by it, all consumptive habits, decays of nature, inward wastings, thin or emaciated constitutions, coughs, asthmas, phthysics, loss of appetite, &c., are to a miracle retrieved, and the body, blood, and spirits powerfully corroborated and restored. A few drops of it in a dish of Bohea tea or chocolate is the most desirable breakfast or supper, and outvies for virtue or nourishment twenty dishes without it, as those who have taken it will find, and scarce ever live without it." Still more toothsome must have been the "nectar and ambrosia" of Mr. Baker, bookseller, at Mercer's Chapel, "prepared from the richest spices, herbs, and flowers, and done with rich French brandy." This compound," when originally invented, was designed only for ladies' closets, to entertain visitors with, and for gentlemen's private drinking, being much used that way," but, zeal for the public, and the diffusion of useful knowledge, stimulated Mr. Baker, the bookseller, to "offer it with twopenny dram-glasses, which are sold inclosed in gilt frames, by the gallon, quart, or twoshilling bottles." As to cosmetics and perfumes, the advertising columns of the newspapers of Queen Anne's reign bloom with immortal youth, and are redolent of" spicy gales from Araby the blest." - Unchanged, unchangeable is quackery of all sorts. But here is an advertisement from the Tatler' (April, 1710), which, like the Duchess of Buckingham's foundling, carries us back into a state of society which has passed away :-" This is to give notice, that Luke Clark, and William Clark, his brother, both middlesized men, brown complexions and brown wigs, went, as it appears by their pocket-books, on the 18th of March last from London to Kingston; but, upon examination, do not own what business they had there, nor where they were on the 19th, 20th, and 21st of the same month; but say, that on the 22nd they came from London and got to Lincoln on the 23rd, and from thence to Castor, and so to Whitegift Ferry; and on the 24th they came to Northcave, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and remaining there two or three days, without any appearance of business, were there seized by the constable; and, for want of sureties for their good behaviour, by a justice of peace were committed to York Castle. There were found upon them four pistols of different sizes, charged, with more bullets and powder ready made up in papers; also two old black velvet masks, and several fir matches dipped in brimstone. Their horses seem to have been bred horses: the one being a large sorrel gelding, blind of the near eye, his near fore-foot and further hind-foot white, which they say they bought at the Greyhound, at Hyde Park Corner, on the 17th of March last; the other, a brown gelding, thought to be dim-sighted in both eyes, a little white on three feet: they say they bought him in Smithfield the same day, and saw him booked in the market-book. One of them had a grey riding-coat and straightbodied coat, both with black buttons; the other's riding-coat was something lighter. If these men have done any robberies, or done anything contrary to law, it is desired that notice thereof may be given within a reasonable time to Mr. Mace, in York, clerk of the peace for the East Riding of Yorkshire, or else these men will be discharged, being as yet only committed for want of sureties for their good behaviour." Perhaps the most curious feature of the advertising columns of the Tatler' is the immense number of private lotteries, announced under the convenient name of sales, in the latter part of 1710. Dipping into "the file," upon chance, we find in the number for September 21-23:-" Mr. Stockton's sale of jewels, plate, &c., to be drawn in the great room at the Duke of Marlborough's Head, on Michaelmas-day, by parish boys and out of wheels." "Mrs. Honeyman, milliner, in Hungerford Street; her twelvepenny sale of goods is put off till the 29th inst." 66 Mr. Guthridge's sixpenny sale of goods, at the toy-shop over against Norfolk Street in the Strand, continues." Mrs. Help's sale of goods, consisting of plate of considerable value, being near full, is to be drawn on Tuesday sevennight at the stone-cutter's in Downing Street;" and " Mr. William Morris's proposals for several prizes; 2500 tickets, in which there are 177 prizes, the highest 1007., the lowest 11s., and 13 blanks to a prize; half-a-crown the ticket." This is rather below than above the average quantity of such advertisements in a number of the Tatler' about that time. The temptations held out to gamblers in this small way were varied in the extreme. One advertisement" gives notice that Mr. Peters' sale of houses in Glouster Street, of 1000l., for half-a-crown, will be drawn within a fortnight at farthest." Another runs thus:-"Tickets for the house on Blackheath, &c., to begin on Thursday the 7th September next, at the Bowling-green House on the said heath, where the sale is to be; at 2s. 6d. per ticket; the highest prize 2207., the lowest 10s. Note, the house is let at 147. 10s. per an., and but one guinea per an. groundrent, the title clear and indisputable." The price of tickets for " Mrs. Symonds' sale of a japanned cabinet and weighty plate, in which there is but 11 blanks to a prize," was 5s. each. Mr. William Morris, mentioned above, risked for his 2s. 6d. tickets "a fine diamond cross, set transparent, with a button all brilliants, plate, atlasses on silk, six silk nightgowns, and several other valuable things." At Mrs. Mortly's India House, at the Two Green Canisters, on the pavement in St. Martin's Lane, were to be had "all sorts of Indian goods, lacquered ware, China fans, screens, pictures, &c., with hollands, muslins, cambrics, fine embroidered and plain short aprons, and divers other things, to be disposed of for blank lottery tickets, at 77. each, and the goods as cheap as for specie. These were the "great goes," but for persons of less ample purses there were "sales" for which the tickets cost 1s., 6d., 3d., and even as low as 2d. "Mrs. Painer's threepenny sale of goods is to be drawn on Tuesday next, the 15th inst., at the Queen's Head in Monmouth Street, Soho. There are some tickets yet to be disposed of there, and at her own lodgings, a clockmaker's, over-against Dean's Court in Dean's Street, St. Anne's; at Mrs. Williams', at Charing Cross, chandler; and at the combmaker's in New Street, Covent Garden." These disguised gambling-houses germinated and multiplied in every court and blind alley of London, and the prices of the tickets were adapted to the pockets of all classes, from the duchess to the cinder-wench, as the temptations were also suited to the tastes of each. This was the great school of "mutual instruction," in which the citizens of the metropolis of Great Britain trained themselves to act worthily the parts they performed in the years of the Great South Sea Bubble, that colossal specimen of self-swindling by a nation, compared with which our paltry modern attempts-our Poyais kingdoms, Peruvian mining-companies, joint-stock companies, of all shapes, colours, and sizes, dwarf and dwindle into insignificance. This plan of getting rid of stale goods with profit is not yet altogether obsolete. The raffles for watches, old teapots, guns, and telescopes, which take place, from time to time, in remote and obscure country-towns, to the inconceivable excitement of their listless inhabitants, are the lingering antiquated fashions which were once supreme mode and bon-ton in the metropolis. Nay, the thing seems to be threatening to raise its head once more in London, and with a delicious hypocrisy, under the pretext of patronising and improving British art. The history of this "revival" is brief. In Scotland-where the genius of economy is rampant, and also the love of patronising, a number of amateurs have for some years been in the habit of clubbing to buy pictures at the Edinburgh exhibitions, and dividing the spoil by lot. An imitative association was set on foot here, either by picture-fanciers who had a mind to get pictures, or by artists who wished to get their unsaleable stock out of their studios-no matter which. So far these associations were what they gave themselves out for. The fashion has become contagious, and now we find, starting up in every street, "little-goes" for the "sale" (to adopt the phraseology of 1710) of printsellers' and picture-dealers' unsaleable stock. The system is an admirable one for accelerating the emptying of lumber rooms with advantage to their owners, and for increasing the already portentous number of walls in respectable houses stuck all over with stiff and glaring daubs. And this device for enabling demure conventional moralists to indulge the taste for gambling inherent in all human beings, with little apparent risk or breach of decorum, is trumpeted with the hundred Stentorpower lungs of the puffing press as the day-dawn of a new and brilliant era in British art! The truth is, that the "teapots," "japanned cabinets," and "buttons of brilliants," which attracted the gulls of Queen Anne's reign, were quite as much entitled to the epithet-"works of art," as the pieces of plastered canvas vended by means of the London little-gocs of the present day. If the East India House only arrests the eye of the passenger, there is nothing in the building itself particularly calculated to make him pause in the midst of the busy thoroughfare of Leadenhall Street; but if he be gifted with the divine faculty of accurately delineating and colouring abstractions, then, indeed, it yields to none in the interest of the associations which cluster thick around it. It has been said of Burke, by a very brilliant writer of the present day, that so vivid was his imagination on whatever related to India, especially as to the country and people, that they had become as familiar to him as the objects which lay on the road between Beaconsfield and St. James's. "All India was present to the eye of his mind, from the hall where suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet of sovereigns, to the wild moor where the gipsy-camp was pitched-from the bazaars, humming like bee-hives with the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of iron rings to scare away the hyænas. The burning sun; the strange vegetation of the palm and cocoa-tree; the rice-field and the tank; the huge trees, older than the Mogul empire, under VOL. V. E which the village crowds assemble; the thatched roof of the peasant's hut, and the rich tracery of the mosque where the imaum prayed with his face to Mecca; the drums, and banners, and gaudy idols; the devotee swinging in the air; the graceful maiden, with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the river side; the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect; the turbans and the flowing robes; the spears and the silver maces; the elephants with their canopies of state; the gorgeous palankin of the prince, and the close litter of the noble lady-all these things were to him as the objects amidst which his own life had been passed."* If such should be the rich, varied, and animated picture which the imaginative eye suddenly conjures up in the not very spacious or striking part of the great eastern thoroughfare in which the India House comes into view, not less glowing are the historical recollections which attach to the edifice in connexion with Anglo-Indian power. History presents nothing more strongly calculated to impress the imagination than the progress of English dominion in the East under Clive and Warren Hastings, and Cornwallis and Wellesley. Instead of clerks and mercantile agents living within the precincts of a fort or factory only by permission of the native rulers, who regarded them as mere pedlers, Englishmen have become the administrators of the judicial, financial, and diplomatic business of a great country,-of provinces comprising above a million square miles and a population exceeding one hundred and twenty millions,-states which yield taxes to the amount of 17,000,000l. and maintain an army of four hundred thousand men. All the business of government has passed into English hands. There is still a Nabob of the Carnatic, but he is a British pensioner on the revenues of the land which his ancestors once ruled. At the capital of the Nizam a British resident, the representative of the East India Company, is the real sovereign. There is still a Mogul who plays the sovereign, but the substance of his power has passed away. Youths from Haileybury College, and from the military school at Addiscombe, rising by regular gradations, have succeeded to the power once wielded by the Mahommedan conquerors of Hindostan, and which they exercise in a manner far more beneficial to the people. They are carefully educated for judicial, financial, diplomatic, and military offices, and are expected to be versed in the language of the people of whose welfare they are to be the guardians. This is a noble field for talent and ambition. When we first attempted to share with the Portuguese and Dutch in the commerce of the East, the qualifications required were but little higher than are now esteemed necessary in a custom-house officer of the lowest class. A turbulent youth was sent out to die of a fever, or to make his fortune. The salaries were so low that it was impossible to live upon them, and all sorts of irregular and unscrupulous practices were connived at, which saved the pockets of the adventurers at home at the expense of the native interests. The writer already quoted shows the present and former state of official servants in India. "At present," he says, "a writer enters the service young; he climbs slowly; he is rather fortunate if, at forty-five, he can return to his country with an annuity of a thousand a-year, and with savings amounting to thirty thousand pounds. A great quantity of wealth is made by |