TRAVELLER'S HALL.

Sketches in the Commercial Room at the Bell Inn, Cheltenham-The Traveller's Ordinary- Trade Puns-Bolton Trotters and Trottees--Song, All the Booksellers-Curious Sporting Anecdote of a Commercial Man-Song, The Knight of the Saddle Bags-Private Theatricals in Public-Visit to the Oakland Cottages, a Night Scene.

AN invitation to dine with the traveller to a London house in the paper and print line, yclept booksellers, introduced the ENGLISH SPY and his friend, the artist, to the scene here presented (see plate). Reader, if you wish to make a figure among the Chelts and be thought any thing of, you will, of course, domicile at the Plough; but if your object is a knowledge of life, social conversation, a great variety of character, and a never-failing fund of mirth and anecdote, join the gentleman travellers who congregate at the Bell or the Fleece, where you will meet with merry fellows, choice viands, good wine, excellent beds, and a pretty chambermaid into the bargain. Your commercial man is often a fellow of infinite jest, a travelling vocabulary of provincial knowledge, and a faithful narrator of the passing events of the time. Who can speak of the increasing prosperity, or calculate upon the falling interests of a town, so well as your flying man of business? The moment he enters a new place he expects the landlord to be ready, cap in hand, to welcome him; he first sees his horse into a stall, and lectures the ostler upon the art of rubbing him down-orders boots to

bring in his travelling bags or his driving box, and bids the waiter send the chambermaid to show him his bed-room-grumbles that it is too high up, has no chimney in the apartment, or is situate over the kitchen or the tap-room-swears a tremendous oath that he will order his baggage to be taken to the next house, and frightens the poor girl into the giving him one of the best bed-apartments, usually reserved for the coffee-room company. Returning below, he abuses the waiter for not giving him his letters, that have been waiting his arrival a week, before he went up stairs-directs boots to be ready to make the circuit of the town with him after dinner, carrying his pattern-books, perhaps half a hundred-weight of Birmingham wares, brass articles, or patterns of coffin furniture; and having thus succeeded in putting the whole house into confusion, only to let them know that the Brummagem gentleman has arrived on his annual visit to the Chelts, with a new stock of every thing astonishing in the brass line, he places himself down at a side table, to answer to his principals for being some days later on his march than they had concluded-remits a good sum in bills and acceptances, and adds thereunto a sheet of orders, that will suffice to keep the firm in good temper for a week to come: sometimes, indeed, the postscript contains a hint of an expected "whereas," or strong suspicions of an act of insolvency, but always couched in the most consolatory terms, hoping the dividend will turn out to be better than present circumstances might lead them to expect. In his visits to his customers he is the most courteous, obliging fellow imaginable; there is no trouble he thinks too much if he is likely to obtain his last account and a fresh order; then, too, his generosity is unbounded: he invites the tradesman to take wine with him at his inn, inquires kindly after all the family, hopes business is thriving, makes an offer of