CHAPTER VI. DEVELOPMENT OF ADVERTISING.

by ‘inch of candle-light,’ forming many a Schalken-like picture of light and shade; or later still we have Hogarthian sketches of the young bloods who swelled of old along the Pall-Mall. We trace the moving panorama of men and manners up to our own less demonstrative, but more earnest times; and all these cabinet pictures are the very daguerreotypes cast by the age which they exhibit, not done for effect, but faithful reflections of those insignificant items of life and things, too small, it would seem, for the generalising eye of the historian, however necessary to clothe and fill in the dry bones of his history.” Indeed, turning over these musty volumes of newspapers is for the imaginative mind a pleasure equal to reading the Tatler or Spectator, or the plays of the period. By their means Cowper’s idea of seeing life “through the loopholes of retreat” is realised, and characteristic facts and landmarks of progress in the history of civilisation are brought under our notice, as the busy life of bygone generations bursts full upon us. We see the merchant at his door, and inside the dimly-lit shops observe the fine ladies of the time deep in the mysteries of brocades and other articles of the feminine toilet, whose very names are now lost to even the mercers themselves. And not alone intent on flowered mantuas and paduasoys are they, for we can in fancy see them, keen ever to a fancied bargain, pricing Chinese teapots or Japanese cabinets, and again watch them as, with fluttering hearts, they assist at lotteries for valuables of the quality familiar to “knockouts” of our own time. We hear the lament of the beau who has lost his clouded amber-headed cane or his heart at the playhouse, and listen to the noisy quacks vending their nostrums, each praising his own wares or depreciating those of his rivals. We see the dishonest serving-man rush past us on the road carrying the heterogeneous treasures which have tempted his cupidity. Soon the “Hue and Cry” brings the same ill-favoured malefactor before us in an improved character as horse-stealer and highwayman; and ere long we hear of the conclusion of his short drama at Tyburn. Thus the various advertisements portray, with more or less vividness, lineaments of the times and the characters of the people.