Messrs. Mouldy and their coadjutors, and the Coaly Cemetery Company, cover the walls with panoramas which are perfectly irresistible. Nor, as a rule, do mothers requiring feeding bottles for their precious little babies, or gentlemen anxious to imperil their limbs on bicycles, and buyers generally, go out expressly to consult the mural repertory of useful knowledge in moments of difficulty. The literature of the streets forms a vast encyclopædia of things to be known—a directory, a dictionary, a vade mecum, contributed by men and women of the time who are their own particular friends, artists, commentators, and trumpeters. But the work is designed less for reference than for general suggestion. It is intended to instil into the public mind, by a variety of expedients carefully adapted to the requirements of the several classes of readers, various scraps of information which, it is hoped, may some day reflect substantial benefit upon their authors. By the aid of this educational machinery we are being continuously instructed. The process is not expensive, and, on the whole, it is successful. What a pity some energetic promoter of national

education does not appropriate the idea, and placard surrounding objects with the lore of primers, geographies, arithmetics, or, perhaps, teach languages without a master by printing convertible terms in parallel columns. The field of speculative possibilities which opens up to view at the bare thought of such a procedure is almost overpowering.

Everybody knows that to induce or cajole an average child into learning a few lessons daily, without repining, is a task of almost superhuman difficulty, and requires special training. To impress the general public with knowledge which they have no immediate cause to acquire, is a feat scarcely less formidable. The only chance is to stimulate curiosity by some device; to provoke inquiry by the creation of a mystery; or to get the subject matter of the communication into the cranium by a process of mental absorption performed unconsciously. By holding a rose perpetually under the nose of the most insensate of mortals, he may in time be induced to notice its delicious fragrance, and, in the end, he may even be grateful for the effort made.

for his improvement.

The work of advertising

has many features in common with such a labour of love. Men and women who have no practical acquaintance with the inconveniences of washingday, can, by dint of hard staring at, or rather being stared at, by a splendid work of art which all must remember to have seen on the hoardings, come to take in the idea that Somebody's washingpowder, or Somebody else's washing-machine, will enable the middle-class housewife to welcome her husband with beaming smiles in a beautiful new dress, when, without the aid of these appliances, she could not appear at all, or in a very sorry plight of domesticity. In like manner the most uninquiring mind is provoked to investigate the conundrum, whereof the answer is, "because it keeps stiff in wet weather :" and in consequence becomes aware that his laundress ought to use a particular starch. Taking in knowledge in this way is very like swallowing nauseous drugs in jam. Still one is all the better for it in the end, and who that has been lured into the toils of an advertisement is in his heart sorry for the attention obtained by false pretences? It is worth while to

examine the system of street advertising somewhat more closely. It comprehends a specific appeal to every class of observers: to those who run, and those who stand; to those who can read, and such as must be taught by pictures; to those who are willing to receive knowledge on easy terms, or will even consent to peruse whole columns of close print, and to those who set their faces as a flint against every description of unasked information, and regard the term advertisement as synonymous with humbug.

The literature of the streets is very commonly addressed to several classes at once with considerable ingenuity. It is, therefore, easier to classify advertisements than the people advertised. Plain, straightforward announcements of undoubted fact, such as Jupiter Minor has "the largest circulation in the world," "The Blue Sauce is the best," "Everybody should see the 'Turn of the Toss,'" Mangnall's "Trousers are the cheapest," The Royal Blank Theatre is "the most accessible house in all London," are made with the simple purpose of piling up the assertions of a truth which it is desired should be ingrained.

Upon any other theory, it, of course, would be impossible to explain the repetition of facts patent to the world above, around, and even beneath. There is a popular feeling that what everybody says must be right. The advertiser not only adopts the doctrine, but turns it into a precept. He makes everybody and everything say what he wishes, and thus creates a "truth" in his own interest. One of the most astounding examples of success in this process of faith, if not fact, creation, is to be found in the popular belief in the virtue of the medicaments of Anybody, the excellency of the wines of Westphalia, the electricity of the chains of Dustman, and the cheapness and durability of the vestments of Shoddy and Son. Without for a moment impugning the intrinsic value of many popular commodities, it is a notorious circumstance that their fame has been made by advertising. Exactly the same process has made many of the "celebrities" of the day. By name paraded on every wall and hoarding, or by cartes in the shop windows, they have become familiar, and familiarity not only breeds contempt but produces fame. Advertisements