who inaugurated Sir Richard Gresham's structure--the centre figure
of a number of others emblematic of the all-embracing commerce of
this country, and surmounted by the words: 'The earth is the Lord's,
and the fulness thereof.' If you ascend the steps of the Royal
Exchange, and pass into the body of the building, you will find a
considerable number of business-looking, sleek, earnest men there,
eagerly engaged in canvassing the general affairs of the world, and
more especially their own particular ventures, hopes, anticipations,
investments therein. If you are an artist, or indeed at all
impressionable in matters of taste, you will, I fear, be painfully
affected by a marble figure near the centre of the hall, which many
persons assert to be a statue of the Queen of these realms--a
calumny which I, as a loyal subject, feel bound most emphatically to
deny. But the chief interest attached to this building is that it is
here the celebrated association known as 'Lloyd's' has its
offices--that Lloyd's, whose name is familiar as a household word in
every country the sea touches, and who underwrite the maritime
ventures of every commercial nation of the globe. Very marvellous
has been the rapid development of this gigantic institution, from
the small beginnings of a few persons meeting in a coffee-house,
till now, when it may be said well-nigh to monopolise the
maritime-assurance business of the world. Not even America has been
able to set up a rival to it at all worthy of the name; and hundreds
of the long-voyage vessels of the States, as well as of all European
powers, are insured here. There is, to be sure, a continental
association that has borrowed its name without leave, and dubbed
itself the 'Austrian Lloyd's'--a designation which forcibly reminds
one of the remark of Coleridge when told that Kotzebue assumed to be
the German Shakspeare: 'Quite so,' replied the author of the
_Ancient Mariner_, 'a very German Shakspeare indeed.' The