h noise, and
crowd, and bustle, be very far from usual attributes of the good town,
yet in driving through this favoured region on a fine day, between the
hours of three and five, we stood a fair chance of encountering as
many difficulties and obstructions from carriages, and as much din and
disorder on the causeway as we shall often have the pleasure of meeting
with out of London.

One of the most popular and frequented shops in the street, and out
of all manner of comparison the prettiest to look at, was the
well-furnished glass and china warehouse of Philadelphia Firkin,
spinster. Few things are indeed more agreeable to the eye than the
mixture of glittering cut glass, with rich and delicate china, so
beautiful in shape, colour, and material, which adorn a nicely-assorted
showroom of that description. The manufactures of Sevres, of Dresden,
of Derby, and of Worcester, are really works of art, and very beautiful
ones too; and even the less choice specimens have about them a
clearness, a glossiness, and a nicety, exceedingly pleasant to look
upon; so that a china-shop is in some sense a shop of temptation: and
that it is also a shop of necessity, every housekeeper who knows to her
cost the infinite number of plates, dishes, cups, and glasses, which
contrive to get broken in the course of the year, (chiefly by that
grand demolisher of crockery ware called Nobody,) will not fail to bear
testimony.

Miss Philadelphia's was therefore a well accustomed shop, and she
herself was in appearance most fit to be its inhabitant, being a trim,
prim little woman, neither old nor young, whose dress hung about her in
stiff regular folds, very like the drapery of a china shepherdess on a
mantel-piece, and whose pink and white complexion, skin, eyebrows, eyes,
and hair, all tinted as it seemed with one dash of ruddy colour, had the
same professional hue. Change her spruce cap for a wide-brimmed hat, and
the damask napkin which she flourished in wiping her wares, for a china
crook, and the figure in question might have passed for a miniature of
the mistress. In one respect they differed The china shepherdess was a
silent personage. Miss Philadelphia was not; on the contrary, she was
reckoned to make, after her own mincing fashion, as good a use of her
tongue as any woman, gentle or simple, in the whole town of Belford.

She was assisted in her avocations by a little shopwoman, not much
taller than a china mandarin, remarkable for the