ONE

NE very salutary result of exploring the haunts of commerce in the bustling capital of this empire is, that it dispels many lamentably erroneous notions of those haunts and the people by whom they are frequented. There is a wide-spread belief, for instance, among many sensible persons, that city men, as a class, are an anxious overworked body, who spend the whole of their days in a whirl of incessant worry; who perpetually make tremendous speculations, and tremble in agony for the peace of Europe; who run out of their offices at all hours to see how the funds stand, and to ask whether Peruvian Sixes are at par; who never see their wives and families except on Sunday; and who principally live upon dry sherry and Abernethy biscuits.

There can be no doubt that many city men of this stamp are easily to be found (in plays and novels), together with bankers prone to midnight assassination, and merchants who curse their only daughter for running away with her drawing-master, or cut off their eldest son with a shilling for refusing to marry an heiress, whose only drawbacks are-age, ugliness, and a hare lip; but it is equally beyond doubt that these same city men cannot be so easily found anywhere else. You won't find them on Cornhill; you won't find them in Change Alley; they are not to be met with in Cheapside; they make no sign in Thames Street; Broad Street is unacquainted with their presence; and Lombard Street is in the same state of ignorance. But above all, Mark Lane is a spot where they fail to congregate, and as it is part of our programme to visit that famous centre, let us proceed there to-day and verify the fact for ourselves.

It is Monday, and accordingly principal market day of the week; the two others being of but secondary importance. The clock has just struck one; the place is full,

and business is at its height. A better moment for visiting the London Corn Exchange could not therefore be chosen.

We look around, and what do we see? Why we see an assemblage of clean, shrewd, cheerful, healthylooking men, calmly established at the stands all round the building on which samples are displayed; we see others quietly passing to and fro and examining those samples; others lazily lolling against the somewhat robust pillars that adorn the interior; while a still larger number are collected in groups, chatting carelessly upon the topics of the day and the disastrous state of the trade with which they are specially connected. These evidently are not the city men of whom we are in search. Let us look farther afield.

Yet stay. The great bulk of the people here, we can see at a glance, are not city men at all. That ruddy-faced, broad-shouldered, cleanly-shaved gentleman, with the wide-brimmed hat, the neat bluespotted neck-tie, the cut away shooting-coat, and the somewhat tightly-fitting trousers, is a farmer from North Walsham. That little rolling fellow, with the Guernsey shirt, the glazed hat, and the tarry trousers

"bowsed up together, all Guiltless of braces as those of Charles Wetherell," is a skipper from the banks of the Orwell. Those awkwardly dressed fellows, rough but honest looking, whose clothes are full of creases which tell of a seclusion undisturbed except on high days and holidays, and who are so persistently blocking up the very threshold of the market, are Kentish hoymen. The spruce men, who are evidently so fond of cheerful tweeds and pleasant scarfs, are millers; and if we look elsewhere we shall see nothing but clerks, outsiders, country people, and suburban dealers.

Let us go back again, therefore, to the gentlemen at the stands. Having noted their external aspect

we will mark now the manner in which they conduct their business, and see what indication it affords of their inner characteristics.

We approach a stand, behind which a city man, most resolutely shaved and of singularly bland mien, is seated. He is reading 'The Times' newspaper. A possible customer approaches, dips his hand into the sample of barley displayed on the stand, peers carelessly at it, winnows it with his fingers, nibbles at it with his front teeth, looks knowing, and asks the price.

What does the occupant of the stand do? Does he smirk or smile, or incline his head, or look amiably silly, or announce by his features, as he would were he a retail hosier, mercer, or butterman, that to wait upon this one particular customer is the all-absorbing idea he has cherished ever since he came into the world? Not a bit of it. He certainly puts aside The Times,' but it is with an air of only halfaroused attention, which shows that he is thinking more of the leading article he was reading than of the question put to him. That question was brief, but his reply is briefer.

'How much?' asks the individual in front of the stand.

Twenty,' replies the individual behind it; ere he subsides again into The Times.'

Now the word twenty, like any other word in the English language, may be spoken in every variety of tone. It may be spoken in a persuasive tone; it may be spoken in a repelling tone. It may be spoken urbanely; it may be spoken in the manner called bearish. It may tell of Decision's firmness or of Hesitation's wavering. It may be gloomily stern or cheerfully frolicsome. As spoken in this instance it is simply an expression of jaunty indifference, carrying with it the suggestion of a loll, both hands in the pockets, and a straw in the mouth.

The gentleman at the stand evidently cares nothing whether the price suits or does not suit; whether the quality answers to what is wanted or to what is not wanted; whether the inquirer buys or lets it

alone. Twenty is the rate at which he means to sell to-day if he sells at all, and his eye plainly says, if not his voice, that he will see the entire commercial community hanged before he accepts a lower figure. Messrs. Swan and Edgar sitting smoking at the door of their premises in Regent Street, with a decanter of port before them, obstructing the entrance by crossing their legs, refusing to alter this position to suit the convenience of customers, and freely using the door-mat for expectoral purposes, would present a picture of trading indifference scarcely more noteworthy than that we are looking upon.

As a natural consequence of this mode of doing business there is not the slightest trace of commercial sternness in the aspect of the Corn Exchange. If you go into Glyn's or the London and Westminster, the awful array of clerks, the decorum of the arrangements, the nature of the place, the questioning suspiciousness of the cashiers, to say nothing about the overpowering dignity of the hall porters, all combine to fill you with respectful timidity, and make you feel like an unconvicted forger or a bashful ticket-of-leave man. At the Corn Exchange, on the other hand, you feel at home at once, and elbow your way through the throng with all the unconcern of a stout alderman or a slim newsboy. If you ask a question here you may get a somewhat off-hand reply, perhaps, but you won't be snapped up short as in certain city haunts, or be referred with cutting acerbity to the 'other counter,' or the country office.' Nay, the writer of these lines verily believes that if, from a pure spirit of waggery, you were to ask the price of skimmed milk or hot codlings, you would be gladly welcomed as a diverting fellow, instead of being ignominiously expelled the market precincts. And lest this expression of opinion should seem fantastic and unsustainable, the holder of it would ask, in support of his views, whether it is not notorious that the frequenters of the Corn Exchange are, as a body, of

a decidedly frolicsome temperament, and rather fond than otherwise of any little incident which agreeably diversifies the regular progress of market routine. He would ask especially, whether it is or is not true that at or about last Christmas time a football was accidently discovered in the very centre of the building? Whether upon the discovery being made the whole market did or did not rise as one man to have a kick at the said football? Whether factors did or did not leave their stands, clerks their desks, buyers their lounging places, and farmers their cautious reserve, to join the sport? Pursuing his inquiries, he would ask whether this scene of unbridled licence did or did not last for about ten minutes, amid the boisterous shouting and rough laughter alike of greyhaired men and beardless boys, and whether it was or was not put an end to by a serious Scotchman of rigid principles, who was scandalized by this riotous display of unbecoming mirth and frivolity? Having asked these questions he would confidently leave his case in the hands of the impartial reader, certain beforehand of the tenour of the replies that must inevitably be made to him.

Nevertheless (if we may for once commence a sentence with that imposing adverb), nevertheless, it would be a grievous error to suppose that it is all play and no work on the London Corn Exchange.

Because everything is not hurry and drive, shout and perspiration, it by no means follows that an immense amount of business is not transacted. Indeed, the develop ment of the trade (to approach the subject seriously) has been enormous, especially since the repeal of the Corn Laws. But when present operations are contrasted with those, say, of a hundred years ago, the increase appears almost marvellous. It sounds like an old wife's tale to hear that, no further back than the commencement of the last century, there was, so to speak, no cornmarket at all in London. Corn was certainly sold at a special place, to wit, at Bear Quay, in Thames Street;

and flour at Queenhithe and Holborn Bridge; but the factorage or agency system, by which trading operations are so greatly facilitated in our own day, was then all but unknown. To certain Essex farmers, it seems, the introduction of the system was due. They were in the habit, we are told, of frequenting one of the roomy old Whitechapel inns; and, for convenience sake, they fell into the custom of leaving samples of their produce with the landlord, and of paying him a commission for selling it for them. Thus the first corn-factor, or intermediary between buyer and seller, arose in the person of this Whitechapel innkeeper.

Of course the idea was soon acted upon by others. Shrewd men saw that here was a new business to be opened out; and corn-factors accordingly grew apace. As they established their stands in various parts of the city—wherever, in fact, it best suited their convenience-people in time found that trade would be greatly facilitated if all these stands were brought to a common centre; and to accomplish this the Mark Lane Corn Exchange was erected. And to think that this was no further back than the year 1747!

Almost equally surprising is the fact that the market remained, as originally erected, for the best part of a century. The production of the country had so far increased that, whereas in 1689 only fourteen million bushels of wheat (according to Gregory King) were grown in England, no fewer than one hundred million bushels were grown in 1828; and trade had, of course, increased in the same proportion. But it was not until the latter year that the Corn Market underwent any enlargement.

We may be quite sure, however, that long before that time the place had become insufficient in size for the business which had to be carried on in it. Indeed, if we may credit the prospectus of a proposed new Corn Exchange issued in 1825, the inconvenience must have been serious indeed. The difficulty of obtaining a stand is so great,' it says, 'that many persons of unim