032 -Notes for the Month. [DEC. 



Mayor, and the Lady Mayoress, and several other persons (covering them 

 with oil moreover) exceedingly. Some jokes abotvt " Lords," and being 

 " anointed," and so forth as the wine was good (a circumstance un- 

 paralelled in the Annals of Guildhall) restored the order of the feast 

 when the alarm was over, pretty tolerably : but so heinous a piece of care- 

 lessness on the part of the city lamplighter, we trust, for example's sake, has 

 not been allowed to remain unpunished. 



A little book, after the manner of Mr. Accum's " Death in the Pot" - 

 .Mr. Wright's *' Dolphin" and one or two other works, assuming to shew 

 .up iniquities, called " The Wine and Spirit Trade Unmasked," is astonish- 

 ing a great many people in town, who have been used to fancy, that, like 

 Desdemona "The wine they drink is made of grapes." Let the world 

 be on its guard ! This affair seems to us to be a recondite humbug : got up 

 by some mine merchant ' We will never believe that " port wine " is made 

 of half such wholesome materials as the expositor describes. Some amus- 

 ing papers upon the i( Frauds of Trade " chiefly crucifying the "ticket" 

 linen-drapers have also appeared in the Times. The imposture of these 

 varlets is a crying one; but there is no remedy for it ; and if there were, 

 the practice of selling inferior goods is not entirely confined to the " cheap 

 shops." It sometimes happens, we are afraid, that a stranger buys at a 

 high-priced shop, precisely the same article for a guinea, which bad 

 enough as it is at any price, it would have been better for him to have 

 bought at an advertising shop for twelve shillings. The lustres, moreover, 

 and looking-glasses, -and marble pillars, of the " higher dealers," (not to 

 speak of their dandy shopmen,) are really too fine for plain people, and 

 must keep some away. Every body feels that the expense of all this rub- 

 bish must be paid, in some shape, by the customer ; and a silk handker- 

 chief, bought in the Strand or Holborn, out of a shop where the master 

 himself stands behind a common oak counter, serves a reasonable man's 

 purposes, just as completely as though it came out of an' " Establishment" 

 on Ludgate Hill, or in Regent-street, where the shopman that sold it wouM 

 be dressed like a "mock lover 1 ' in a pantomime, and the fittings-up of 

 the place in which it was purchased have cost three thousand pounds. 



The Alexandrine extent of our first article this month, compels us rather 

 to curtail the " fair proportions" of our last. It matters little that we have 

 much more to say, when we have no more paper to say it upon. This 

 circumstance compels us to omit all mention, for the present, of a vast 

 number of curious arul important matters, which we had intended looking 

 -to our customary limit to discuss ; as Mr. Williams's wholesale " burial" 

 proposition ; His scheme for relieving good Christians from the dangers of 

 " resurrection men," by confining the attacks of the latter peculiarly to the 

 Jews ; Mrs. Fry's speculations upon the state of Ireland ; A minor 

 Samaritan upon the " Watch Houses" of London and Westminster; The 

 Order in Council to repress Greek piracies; The " Slave Grace;" The 

 race between the Mail Coaches, and the Sun newspaper and Phoebus 

 victorious, &c. &c. &c. All of which, with many others too numerous 

 to mention, must pass for this December number; but may perhaps 

 rise again on the first of January, if the world and the life of perio- 

 dicals endure so long. 



