few labouring people were connected with the
trade, and employment was never wanting.

John Baring established a bank; it enabled
him to render valuable services to the freemen
in whose hands was the representation of the
city, and they returned him to parliament. His
dress was singular. Coat, waistcoat, breeches,
of a light speckled colour—it was called pepper
and salt—silk stockings of the same, small steel
buckles at his knees, large steel buckles on his
shoes. He was a tall thin man, with powdered
hair, and a sharp penetrating look, who seemed to
measure with his gold-headed cane every step as
he walked. The people called him "Old Turkey
Legs." Almost everybody had a nickname in
those days; but he could smile at the jest, as
those legs, with the assistance of the electors,
took him to the honourable House, and there
and then and thus were sown the seeds of future
greatness. The family adopted for their crest a
bear (German, baer) with a silver ring in his nose.
It would probably have been of gold had Matthew
Baring been able to look into coming times.

Endeavouring to recal some of the personages
who have passed away like shadows "from the
sunshine to the sunless land," a crowd of figures
present themselves characteristic of a state of
society which has wholly departed. I have some
difficulty in selecting from the multitude. The
other day, looking over the old portfolio of one of
the Exeter bankers and merchants, who was the
terror of his circle, as his faithful but caricaturing
pencil recorded the "veritable effigies" of
the time, I could hardly fancy that pretty girls
whom I well recollect, had ever been clad in
garments so absurdly grotesque—such enormous
bonnets, waists as high as their armpits, short
petticoats to exhibit their flesh-coloured clocked
silk stockings, high-heeled shoes, black patches
on their face; or that gentlemen wore cocked-
hats, cauliflower wigs or pigtails, ruffles, shorts
and silks, buckles, and metal buttons.

But so they were, and so they are not now.

Magnates, magistrates, lawyers, doctors, divines
—can they ever have been so ridiculous? Yes!
I recognise their old familiar faces. There is
S. F. M., with the president's arm-chair sticking
to him. He never entered an assembly without
exhibiting intense anxiety to be called upon to
fill it. Will Mr. M. do us the favour? Then a
complacent smile upon a visage naturally solemn
and severe, a succession of courteous bows, and
a slow hesitating march towards the head of the
room. There is D. P., his hands behind him in
his coat-pockets, looking at the stars, and certain
to stumble over the first stone in his way.
Alderman D.—was he really so perfect a picture of an
owl, so sedate, and so stupid? And the clergy—
Anglican and Dissenting—did they truly exhibit
such expressions of polemical bitterness, of
self-satisfied complacency? Was the cushion so
vehemently thumped? Were the eyes so
imposingly uplifted? Magna est veritas.

Two centuries ago, when there was an
insufficient supply of small change and copper coinage
issued from the Royal Mint, merchants and traders
were in the habit of issuing brass halfpenny
tokens for the convenience of their dependents,
which were changed for silver when collected in
sufficient amount. They generally bore some
device indicative of the trade of the issuer; and
trade was generally an inheritance from father
to son. There still exist coins bearing the device
of a wool-comb, with "John Bowring, of Chulmleigh,"
(near Exeter,) "his halfpenny, 1678."
This family had for many generations, as
manufacturers and fullers, been engaged in the woollen
trade. C. B. was one of the last of its representatives
in Exeter. He died half way between
fourscore and fourscore years and ten. Many
remember his serene and smiling countenance,
his long silvery hair, his gentle voice, and how
impossible it was to be near him without feeling
happier in the mere reflection and reaction of
goodness from his presence. He saw in his own
person and property all the marks of decay, but
hung to the fragments of a departing industry
till it slipped wholly away from his keeping.
First, one mill was abandoned, then a second.
The number of millmen and tuckers was
diminished by death, and with the departure of
the trade from Exeter, they emigrated to other
places, or took to other labour. C. B., who was a
lover of music, was a friend of William Jackson,
the organist of the cathedral, some of whose
pieces, such as "Time has not thinned my flowing
hair," live in many a memory. He was a
lover of books, and no line of Shakespeare was
unfamiliar to him. In his old age, while seated
in his arm-chair, it was delightful to hear him
constantly quote some passage appropriate
to the daily events of life. But he lived on
the past, lingering amidst the scenes of his
early activity, and for years before his death
(except to attend the religious services at the
Unitarian meeting-house) scarcely ever wandered
beyond the limits of his garden and paddock.

In Exeter, as in many other important seats
of industry, the Dissenters, who were excluded
from municipal dignities, took to money-making,
as persecuted people frequently do, and found
compensation and consolation in doing better,
in a worldly point of view, than most of their
neighbours. The mayor and corporation, grandly
robed and furred, marched in stately style to the
cathedral, headed by the sword-bearer, who wore
a broad-brimmed copper hat, richly adorned, and
the parade was the object of great awe to the
little boys and girls who accompanied the
procession. The civic dignitaries—and most
dignified they were!—were composed mostly of the
well-to-do shopkeepers, who were considered to
represent the grandeur of Church and State;
while those who failed in reverence for these
time-honoured institutions and self-elected
magistrates, were designated Jacobins, and in periods
of excitement were burnt in effigy by the same
classes who mastered the city on every fifth of
November, crying: