Strand, having still an interest in the firm as guardians of poor mad Patrick, promoted two of their old clerks, Sir William Forbes and James Hunter (afterwards Sir James Hunter Blair), to be partners in the business, with Robert Herries, a London merchant of influence, at the head of the firm. Herries cared more for merchandise than for banking. He conducted great speculations in all sorts of articles, and brought to the house great wealth, albeit at great risk, as agent of the Farmers-general of France for the purchase of tobacco in England, especially in Glasgow, then the headquarters of this trade. He also conceived a bold plan for providing European travellers with circular letters of credit, and with that end set up an office in St. James's Street, where is still conducted the bank that bears his name. But he was too speculative for his partners. Therefore they separated in 1775; and, from that time till his death in 1806, Sir William Forbes was the chief manager of the great Edinburgh bank of Forbes and Co., amalgamated with the Union Bank of Scotland in 1838. He was not famous as a banker alone. Mr. Scott came to breakfast,' says Boswell, at which I introduced to Dr. Johnson and him my friend Sir William Forbes, a man of whom too much good cannot be said; who, with distinguished abilities and application in his profession of a banker, is at once a good companion and a good Christian, which, I think, is saying enough.' Of him, too, the son of Mr. Scott' said, in 'Marmion '

'Far may we search before we find
A heart so manly and so kind!
And not around his honoured urn
Shall friends alone and kindred mourn;
The thousand eyes his care had dried
Pour at his name a bitter tide:
And frequent falls the grateful dew
For benefits the world ne'er knew.'

In the meanwhile the house of James and Thomas Coutts was steadily advancing in wealth and influence. James Coutts, never a very happy or agreeable man, became more morose and unattractive as he grew older. His chief reason

for taking his brother Thomas into partnership in 1760 appears to have been the need of some trustworthy assistant in managing the business. Soon after that he probably gave up nearly all active share in its direction. He entered parliament as member for Edinburgh; but he took no prominent part in its debates till near the year 1777, when symptoms of the family insanity that had already seized his eldest brother showed themselves in him. He made a speech in the House of Commons, so rambling and preposterous that his friends persuaded him to take no further share in the debates. Soon after that he went to Italy with his daughter, an only child, who there found a husband. At Turin he went raving mad; and, while on his way home for suitable treatment, he died at Gibraltar, early in 1778.

Even Thomas showed occasional eccentricities during his long and busy life. He had come to London to be junior partner in the mercantile establishment of St. Mary Axe, as we saw, in 1754, when he was about twenty years old; and he quitted that in 1760, as we saw, to enter his brother's banking-house in the Strand. In that year, or shortly after, he married one of his brother's servants, the daughter of a small Lancashire farmer, Elizabeth Starkey by name; 'in whom, with a handsome countenance and great good-humour, were united many rustic virtues that are, unfortunately, not so common to domestic servants at the present day.' So says the biographer, writing twoand-thirty years ago; what would he say of domestic servants in this present day? But even Betty Starkey could be saucy now and then. A few days before her marriage-a rainy, dirty day, we are told-she was at her work, when one of her master's clerks ran into the house, and was proceeding to hurry upstairs, there to get rid of his wet clothes. Betty stopped him, and bade him take off his shoes, so as to avoid dirtying the newlywashed stairs. But the young man, resenting what he thought an impertinence, only paused to stamp

and scrape on each step as he ascended, in order that he might soil them all as much as he could. 'Before long,' Betty shouted after him, 'I'll make you pull off your shoes, and your stockings too, whenever Í choose it.' But the threat seems never to have been put in force. The young man, when he heard of the approaching marriage, thought he would surely be dismissed, or made to suffer in some way for his indiscretion.

Instead of that,

the young Mrs. Coutts showed herself especially friendly towards him. 'In the earlier stage of her connection with her husband,' we are told, 'her mind was necessarily uncultivated, and her manners far from refined. Mr. Coutts, however, neglected not to take all due pains to qualify her for the station to which he had elevated her; and her quickness and capacity was such as amply rewarded him for his exertions. In a few short years she became, in manners and intelligence, as much a gentlewoman as some of those ladies who had been bred and brought up in the lap of luxury and splendour.' And she certainly educated her three daughters so well that they were thought fit, with the help of the dowries their father was able to give them, to enter the most aristocratic circles. Sophia, the eldest, was married to Sir Francis Burdett, in 1793; Susan, the second, became Countess of Guildford in 1796; and Frances, the third, was made wife of the first Marquis of Bute in 1800.

are

Thomas Coutts, though laughed at and abused for marrying a housemaid, succeeded well in pushing the business, of which he soon became, and continued for nearly fifty years, entire master. Soon after his establishment as a banker, we told, he began to have regular dinner - parties of bankers and moneyed men, intended to promote friendly and helpful feelings among all members of the class, and especially to increase his own influence. At one of these dinners, a city man, gossiping about his business, told how, on that same day, a nobleman had come to him, sought a loan of 30,000l., and been refused,

as he could give no sufficient security for the large debt. Before going to rest, Thomas Coutts sent a message to the nobleman referred to, asking the favour of his lordship's attendance at the countinghouse in the Strand on the following morning. The invitation was accepted, and the visitor, introducing himself to the banker, was astonished at his tendering him thirty 1000l. notes. But what security am I to give you?' he asked. 'I shall be satisfied,' answered Coutts, 'with your lordship's note of hand.' That was soon and thankfully given. 'Now,' said the nobleman, 'I find that at present I shall only require 10,000l. Be good enough, therefore, to keep the remaining 20,000l., and open an account with it in my name.' To this proposal Coutts assented, and before long he was rewarded for his unusual exercise either of good-nature or of exceptional prudence, by a repayment of the loan, accompanied by a deposit of 200,000l., the result of a sale of some family estates, made possible by that loan. Other members of the aristocracy, at the recommendation of Coutts's first friend, transferred their accounts to him; and from that time his house became the most fashionable of the West End banks.

George III. banked with him until he found that Coutts had lent 100,000l. to his son-in-law, Sir Francis Burdett, in furtherance of his election as M.P. for Middlesex. Thereupon he transferred his account to one of the Tory establishments. With Burdett for his sonin-law, and Sir Thomas Cochrane, afterwards Lord Dundonald, for one of his oldest and stanchest friends, the Tory monarch might certainly regard him with some dislike.

In spite of his radicalism, however, Thomas Coutts prospered as a banker. Retaining the old house handed over to his brother by George Campbell, he soon filled it with business to overflowing. It was nearly in the centre of the space once covered by the New Exchange, the quaint structure designed as a rival to Gresham's building, and serviceable as a resort for

Dryden, Wycherley, Etheridge, and his friends in one generation, and Addison and his followers in another, before the place grew so disreputable that it had to be pulled down in 1737. When the brothers Adam began to build the Adelphi in 1768, Coutts secured a piece of ground adjoining his house, and stipulated that the new street leading to the entrance should be opposite his property. He proceeded to erect upon it a wing or continuation of his old premises, containing new offices and strong rooms. The strong rooms alone cost him 10,000l. Walls, floors, and roofs were made of solid blocks of stone six inches thick, and joined together with unheard-of precaution. The doors and panels were all of wrought-iron, and the closets contained safes within safes, all made as stoutly as possible. The first article deposited in any of these safes, it is recorded, was a precious diamond aigrette, which the Grand Turk had with his own hands transferred from his turban to Sir Horatio Nelson's hat.

Coutts carried to extremes the strictness of detail proper in a banker. Every evening care was taken to balance the day's transactions; and on one occasion, when a deficit of 28. 10d. was found on closing the books and comparing them with the state of the till, we are told that he kept all his clerks in the whole night through, bidding them find out the error somehow or other. Next morning, Mr. Antrobus, a junior partner in the firm, coming in, and hearing of the difficulty, explained that he had taken 28. 10d. out of the till, to pay for the postage of a foreign letter, but had forgotten to put it on record.

This is another of the stories told about Thomas Coutts's management of his bank: 'It is the duty of the junior clerks in most bankinghouses,' says the narrator, to do the out-door or bill-collecting business; but, if the day's transactions be heavy, some of the upper clerks take that duty. On the day that relates to this anecdote, the amount of the western walk exceeded

17,000l.; and a Mr. Lwas di

rected to take it. At the usual hour

of the clerks' returning, Mr. L was missing. The noting hour passed; messengers were sent to all the settling-houses, and to his private lodgings; but no tidings could be obtained. Advertisements were sent to all the newspapers; and next morning the town was placarded with a full description of person and property, and a large reward offered for securing the defaulter. Nothing was heard during the next day; but early the following morning one of the partners in the Southampton Bank arrived post, bringing with him the note-case and bag, containing the whole of the missing property, of which he gave the following account. The landlord of the inn at which the coach arrives,' he said, 'had the day before, about three o'clock, called on him, and begged him to accompany him to his house, where a gentleman had arrived early in the morning, had gone to bed, apparently very ill, was, as he thought, now dying, and wished to make some communication relative to a large sum of money then in his possession. On his arrival, the person told him his name, said that he was a clerk in Mr. Coutts' house, and had been out collecting, and that on his return through Piccadilly he was seized with a stupor, a malady he for the last four months had been subject to, owing, as he supposed, to a contusion on the head he had received by a fall from a swing' (strange sport for a banker's senior clerk!) in the gardens of the Mermaid at Hackney. He added, he could give no other account how he came where he now was, which he did not know till the landlord informed him; for, on the moment he found the stupor coming on, to save the money, he got into a coach with the door standing open, which he supposed was a hackney one, but which proved to be the Southampton stage; and that he had remained insensible during the whole journey. He now begged, for God's sake, that an express might be immediately sent off to inform the house of the circumstance.' The firm caused all the posted bills to be pasted over with bills acknowledging the recovery of

the whole property, and stating that the delay had only been occasioned by sudden illness.' The banker seems to have had some slight suspicion, however, that his clerk had purposely gone down to Southampton, intending thence to make his way to the Continent; but that, finding the Guernsey boat gone, he had adopted this plan of hiding his evil purpose. But nothing could be proved against him. Therefore he was dismissed, on the ground that a person subject to such fits could hold no place of trust in a banking-house; and a present was made to him, large enough to secure him a comfortable annuity.

Thomas Coutts was a charitable man, though very strict in all business relationships, and, in old age, very miserly-looking in his own bearing and apparel. 'He was,' according to a not very friendly critic, 'a pallid, sickly, thin old gentleman, who wore a shabby coat and a brown scratch wig.' One day a good-natured person, fresh from the country, stopped him in the street, and offered him a guinea. Coutts thanked him, but declined the gift, saying that he was in no 'immediate

want.'

The banker was by no means stingy, however, in any case in which stinginess was really blameworthy. His purse was always open for the relief of distress. He was also famous for the good dinners that he gave, and the crowd of wits that those dinners tempted into the circle of his acquaintance. Especially was he fond of theatrical society. Playwrights and actors always found him a good patron; and, either in idle compliment, or because his opinions were worth heeding, often consulted him on even the intricate details of stage management and play-writing.

One of his theatrical friendships was particularly memorable in its consequences. Of Thomas Coutts's first wife, the exemplary servant whom he married somewhere near 1760, we hear nothing after 1785 or 1786, save that soon after that, symptoms of madness or imbecility -a kind of trouble that pressed with singular force and frequency

on the banker's kindred and belongings-appeared in her conduct; and that, having long been dead to society, she actually died in 1815. Thomas Coutts was four or fiveand-seventy years old at that time. But within three months of his first wife's death, he married a secondthe famous Harriet Mellon. With her, indeed, he had been very intimate for some years previously; thereby providing the world with plenty of topic for scandal, although there had been no real ground, though plenty of excuse, for it. 'Miss Mellon,' we are told by Leigh Hunt, was arch and agreeable on the stage. She had no genius; but then she had fine eyes and a good-humoured mouth.' In 1795, while yet quite young, having herself and her mother to provide for, she made her first appearance at Drury Lane, as Lydia Languish. She made much stir during the next twenty years, albeit Mrs. Siddons was then alive, and giving expression to her wonderful talents on the same Old Drury boards. Her last appearance on the stage was as Audrey, near the beginning of 1815. At that time, because of the insults to which she was subjected, in consequence of his long-continued attentions to her, old Coutts persuaded her to abandon the theatre, and he gave her very liberal opportunities for so doing. For 25,000l. he bought Holly Lodge, at the foot of Highgate Hill, from Sir W. VaneTempest; and, having stocked it with horses, carriages, and every sort of requisite furniture, placed it at her disposal. Before the year was out he married her; and she seems to have been a good wife to him during his few remaining years of life. She knew how to hold her own against the opposition of other people, shown in all sorts of curious and vulgar ways. Specially prominent in his opposition was her next-door neighbour at Highgate, 'a late member for Middlesex.' His carriage road passed directly in front of Mrs. Coutts's dining-room windows; and every time that she gave a dinner-party this road was suddenly filled with sheets, shirts, shifts, and pillow-cases, and all the

appendages of a washing-day, hung out to dry, and in such abundant quantities as surprised the neighbours, and made some of them suppose the honourable member took in washing.' Thereto was added, of course, a clique of noisy household damsels and charwomen,' whose business it was to talk as loudly and as coarsely as they could; their work being best done when they oftenest and most effectively repeated the scandals talked of the lady whom they were hired to insult. That was a persecution that no one could patiently submit to. Mrs. Coutts complained of it; but obtained no answer. She offered to buy up her enemy's house and carriage road for a very high sum; but still no notice was taken of her communications. Then she resorted to a fresh expedient. She had a high wall, more than a hundred feet long, built all along her grounds, and in front of her neighbour's property; and in that way entirely cut off from him all view of the Highgate hills. That cost her 1000l.; but it effected its purpose. The stubborn M.P. declared himself willing to sell the ground in question; the wall was

pulled down again; and Holly Lodge, with extended surroundings, became a pleasanter spot than ever.

Mrs. Coutts was not Mrs. Coutts very long. Her venerable husband died in February 1822, one-andninety years of age. He left her in unrestrained possession of all his personal and landed property, stated to be under 600,000l. in value, in Middlesex-we know not how much out of Middlesex-besides a very large share in the immense annual profits of the banking-house. In due time Mrs. Coutts became Duchess of St. Albans; but she took care to secure her vast fortune in her own hands; and when she died she left it, in accordance, it was supposed, with her former husband's wishes, to his favourite grand-daughter-the excellent lady now famous all the world over for her charities and wise use of her fortune for the benefit of her fellows. It was reckoned a few years ago that Miss Burdett Coutts's wealth, if told in sovereigns, would weigh thirteen tons, and fill a hundred and seven flour-sacks.

H. R. F. B.

I.-BANGOR.

NE of the best and daintiest

Nides of our Welsh watering places, and which is, as it were, its shop front, is the little rustic station where the trains stop. From the windows of the carriage it seems to have quite a Rhine-like look, and an air of pastoral innocence. The porters seem to be spiritualized more or less, and to have a dash of the pleasant foreign familiarity. Even the fatal coloured advertisements, the counterfeit presentments of red-brick warehouse, and the complicated sun-blinds, like a row of blue eyelids one over the other, and the fashionable inn at another fashionable watering-place, where the open pony carriage-and-four is

driving up a little stiffly to the door-these frescoes do not seem to flare out so objectionably as at other

places. Even Messrs. W. H. Smith

and Son, who live by deputy in this little hutch among their bright books and clean savory newspapers, and who seem so warm among their railway rugs, and straps and opera glasses, and even razors seem to tone themselves and their property down to the prevailing rusticity. We have always trains coming in here leisurely, who back and go forward, and jib like restive horses; who go off suddenly into a cave or tunnel at the end of our station, when we think we have done with them finally, but who reappear in a few moments, going backwards and winding and bending like a snake.