anxious capitalists and speculators, who twitch
their thin fingers, slouch along with heads
lowered, and peer from under broad hats with
thin faces, like the conventional type of the
miser. The members of the Stock Exchange
and their outside parasites are not of this order;
but are stout and cheerful-looking middle-aged
"bucks," in huge double-breasted waistcoats;
or full-whiskered young " swells," in turned-
down paper collars, and unexceptional trousers.
They talk about business, in easy lounging
attitudes that would not disgrace the steps of the
most aristocratic club in Pall-Mall, and seem to
show no vulgar money-grubbing anxiety in their
faces about the course of the market. Outside
the house they act and look like gentlemen, but
inside the house they reverse the old school-boy
order of things, and are riotous, disorderly, and
much given to practical joking. Towards two
o'clock on a " ticket," or settling day, before the
fatal rattle is heard, they crowd and leap and
hustle and shout, until the stentorian porter,
whose duty it is to call the names of the
members inquired for at the door, is almost unable
to make his shrill ringing voice heard. They
have a fancy for " bonneting" each other; for
chalking caricatures on coats; and for throwing
ink on shirt fronts. Some of the members have a
rough talent for comic etching, and this is often
exercised at the expense of other members whose
appearance presents any tempting peculiarity.

No man's origin is safe from their prying
curiosity, and if it present any materials for a
ballad or a squib, such a production is at once
manufactured. Names are a great source of
joking of this kind, exactly as they are in
schools, and the thirty members who sit upon
the committee are favourite targets for the
comic satirical muse. The peculiar titles of the
mine stocks, furnish easy themes for budding
rhymesters, and a young scion of the house is
happy when he can put together and hum
something like the following:

Fare thee well, my Wheal Mary Anne,*
And fare thee well for a while;
For your prices are steady,
And your calls are all ready,
Then fare thee well for a while,
Mary Anne!Then fare thee well for a while.
* The name of a Cornish mine.

Sometimes their talents are exercised in the
cause of commercial morality—when their
fingers have been burnt by touching damaged
trading shares; and they put forward some such
song as the following, supposed to be sung by
bank shareholders at general meetings:

TUNE—JOLLY YOUNG WATERMAN.

Did you ever hear tell of our stupid old auditors
Who into bank ledgers pretended to pry,
And made such a show of accountants' dexterity,
Winning each heart and deceiving each eye?
They looked so neat, and they wrote so steadily,
We all of us voted them in so readily,
And they eyed all our clerks with so searching an
air—
Oh! these auditors ne'er were in want of a chair.

But all this deportment deceived only shareholders,
Our clerks were too knowing in figures and books,
And Watts, Robson, Pullinger, Redpath, and Durden,
Have shown us the folly of trusting to looks.
They took out our money—as much as they wanted
(God bless them for not taking more than they
did!),
And then by a system they called " double entry,"
Oh! they balanced accounts, and our losses they
hid

In the mean time our drowsy self-satisfied auditors,
Who into bank ledgers pretended to pry—
Who'd made such a dazzling show of dexterity,
While pass-books were tampered with under their
eye—
Still looked as neat, and still wrote as steadily,
And signed their dear names to the " balance" as
readily,
And eyed all the clerks with a confident air—
Oh! these auditors must be kicked out of the chair!

It must not, however, be supposed that all
the members of the Stock Exchange are
practical jokers, comic song writers, caricaturists,
and happy-go-lucky speculators. Many of them
are far-seeing earnest men of business, with a
vast range of knowledge and an European
reputation. Among past members we have
the founders of the Rothschild and Goldsmid
families, the anecdotes about whom—mostly
fabricated—would fill half a dozen volumes.
The old business man is often highly romantic,
even during business hours, and the wonders he
will relate about the elder Rothschild and the
days of " pigeon expresses," ought to make a
story-teller's mouth water.

A greater man, however, than any of the
most eminent loan-mongers, about whom we
hear so much, was David Ricardo, the stock-
broker and political economist. He had one of
the keenest and clearest intellects for grasping
abstract subjects ever known, and besides
winning a prominent position as a writer upon
political economy, he did good service for
theory in its everlasting battle with practice.
Starting with what is called in popular histories
of self-made men, nothing, he ended by making
an enormous fortune for his family. This has
not only secured to his name the respect of a
money-making country, in a money-making age,
but has proved that those who can think, often
know how to act, and are not easily distanced
in the race of life by mere bustling stupidity.

THE STARLING.

SPRING'S pilot! and her nimblest-wingèd darling,
Despite the arrowy-flighted swallow
That in thy wake doth follow
To rob thee of renown, belovèd starling!
Is it thy voice I hear,
Keen, confident, and clear,
Along the windy fallows far away,
Startling the cloudy air?
And nearer, and more near,
Till now thy note is there
In the leafless larch, now here
In the yet unblossom'd orchard, sprinkled through
the scanty spray;
Once more, among the dews
ln green England, shedding news