THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, LONDON. In most large commercial cities, it has long been the custom that a particular place should be appropriated to the daily meetings of merchants. The name which was first generally applied to such places is Bourse, by which they are still known in Paris, Antwerp, St. Petersburg, and other large cities on the continent. The account given of the origin of the name of Bourse, as applied to a place of meeting for merchants, is this. In the city of Bruges there stood a large ancient building, which had been erected by the noble family of La Bourse, (signifying Purse in French and Flemish,) whose coat of arms on the walls was three purses. The merchants of Bruges made this old house the place of their daily assemblies; and when they afterwards went to the fairs of Antwerp and Mons, they called the place appropriated in those cities to similar purposes, by the same name as that which they had applied to the place of meeting in their own city, that is to say,-the Bourse. The French merchants also carried the name into the cities of their own country; and even in London the merchants' place of meeting was called Bourse or Burse, until Queen Elizabeth ordered it to be styled the Royal Exchange; and even afterwards retained the original name among foreigners, who styled it the Bourse Royale.

The Bourse or Burse in London was built by the celebrated merchant, Sir Thomas Gresham *; and before its erection the merchants were accustomed to assemble in the open air in Lombard street, where they transacted their business, subject to the many inconveniences of such an exposure. That these inconveniences were severely felt is proved by the fact that various schemes were suggested for remedying them; although no active steps appear to have been taken for that purpose until the year 1531. In that year, Sir Thomas Gresham's father, Sir Richard, who enjoyed the honourable distinction of being styled "the King's Merchant," and who was then serving the office of sheriff, wrote to Sir Thomas Audley, the Lord Privy Seal, requesting him to move the king (Henry the Eighth) to direct a letter to be sent to Sir George Monoux, requiring him to sell certain houses in Lombard-street to the mayor and commonalty, for the purpose of erecting a Burse on the ground of the same for the use of the merchants.

Three years after Sir Richard's application, the king sent a letter to the city, directing that a Burse should be built at Leadenhall; but as the Common Council voted that the place of meeting should not be removed from Lombard-street, no further measures were taken.

Thirty years afterwards, when Elizabeth had been seated on the throne about six years, the scheme was revived with greater effect. Sir Thomas Gresham proposed to the corporation of London, in the year 1564— That if the city would give him a piece of ground in a commodious spot, he, at his own expense, would erect an Exchange, with large and covered walks, wherein the merchants and traders might daily assemble, and transact business at all seasons, without interruption from the weather, or impediments of any kind.

This offer was accepted; and the foundation of the Exchange was laid by Sir Thomas Gresham on the 7th of June 1566. The superstructure was carried on with rapidity, and the whole covered in with slate by November 1567, soon after which the building was "fully finished.”

The upper part of this edifice was divided into shops, which were let out by Sir Thomas at a yearly rent. These shops were seven feet and a half long See Saturday Magazine, Vol. II., p. 225.

Presented William Grimbel for keping typlinge in the vaults under the Exchange, and for broyling of herringes, sprotts, and bacon, and other thinges in the same vaults noisome to the merchants and others resortinge to the Exchange.

The number of the upper shops was one hundred and twenty; which, when the vaults had been detached from them, "paid, one with another, a rent of four pounds ten shillings a year, upon leases of twentyone years." Ward, in his Life of Gresham, says, that the tenants placed in them by Sir Thomas were chiefly young men of small fortunes, but industrious, who, by their diligence, brought great business to their shops, and employed some thousands of poor people in working our manufactures." It would seem, however, that they were not at first very prosperous; for when Elizabeth visited the Exchange, three years after its erection, so many of the shops were unoccupied that Sir Thomas found it necessary to go round among the shopkeepers and entreat them "to furnish and adorne with wares and wax-lights, as many shoppes as they either coulde or woulde, and they should have all those so furnished, rent free for that year." Some time afterwards, Stow's Continuator, speaking of this Exchange says, "it is as plenteously stored with all kinde of rich wares and fine commodities as any particular place in Europe; into which place many forraine princes daily send to be best served of the best sort." The same authority enumerates among the tenants of the shops of that period, haberdashers, armourers, apothecaries, booksellers, goldsmiths, and globe-sellers.

The visit mentioned above as having been paid by Queen Elizabeth to the Bourse in 1571, was the occasion of its obtaining the name of "Royal Exchange," by which it has ever since been known. Her Majesty went into the city to dine with Sir Thomas Gresham, and on her return inspected it.

The three and twentieth of Januarie, [1571,] the Queene's Majestie, accompanied with her nobility, came from her house at the Strand, called Summerset-place, and entered the citie of London by Temple Bar, Fleet-street, Cheape, and so by the north side of the Bursse, to Sir Thomas Gresham's in Bishopsgate-street, where she dined. After dinner, her Grace returning through Cornhill, entered the Bursse on the south side; and after her Highness had viewed every part thereof above ground, especially the Pawne, which was richlie furnished with all sorts of the finests wares in the citie, she caused the same Bursse by an herald to be proclaimed The Royal Exchange, so to be called from thenceforth and no otherwise.

A curious tradition has been preserved relative to this visit, namely, that Sir Thomas, before the Queen came to his house, purchased of a foreigner a costly pearl, which, on account of its high price, had been refused by several persons of the first quality, that he caused it to be reduced to powder, and during the entertainment drank it up in a glass of wine. The tradition is embodied in an historical play in which Gresham thus speaks,

Here fifteen hundred pound at one clap goes,
Instead of sugar Gresham drinkes this pearle
Unto his queen and mistress: pledge it lords.
This story, (rays Dr. Ward,) has been handed down by
tradition as a real fact, but as I find no historical proof of

VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS OF VARIOUS
CLIMATES.

of the edifice; repairing the sculptured figures and scroll-work, the roof, galleries, shops, &c., in short, of renovating the whole structure. The aggregate expenses amounted to about 33,000l., of which the the stone staircases and floors alone cost 60007.

The old tower was a lofty structure, being one hundred and seventy-eight feet in height; it consisted of three stories, with grouped columns and pilasters of the Corinthian and composite orders at the angles. The lower story was stone, the upper stories of timber, finished by a cupola, on which was sustained a ponderous weathercock, in the form of a grashopper. It was a most singular design, and strikingly dissimilar to the various church towers. The tower which replaced it in 1821, and the shell of which remained still standing after the recent conflagration, was only one hundred and twenty-eight feet six inches in height. Within the area, on the four interior sides of the building, were twenty-five large niches, containing figures of twenty-two of our sovereigns, namely:-on the south side, Edward the First, Edward the Third, Henry the Fifth, and Henry the Sixth; on the west, Edward the Fourth, Edward the Fifth, Henry the Seventh, and Henry the Eighth; on the north, Edward the Sixth, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, James the First, Charles the First, Charles the Second, and James the Second; on the east, within a conjoined or double niche, were William and Mary; George the First, George the Second, George the Third, and George the Fourth.

Such, then, was the Royal Exchange of London, when, on the night of Wednesday, the 10th of January last, it fell a prey to the flames. Soon after ten o'clock on that night, a fire broke out in the northeastern corner of the edifice; it spread with rapidity towards the west, and in the space of a few hours had made a complete circuit of the quadrangle, destroying, in succession, the northern, western, southern, and eastern sides of the building. Of the tower which rose above the principal entrance on the southern side, the shell alone was left standing; and some of the decorations of the portico above that entrance sustained but little injury. The statue of Charles the Second, which stood in the middle of the area within, was not destroyed; but as the inner walls fell, they carried with them all the royal statues which had formed so conspicuous a feature among their

ornaments.

How various are the climates of the earth, and yet
how uniform is each climate in its temperature, not-
withstanding the fact, that we traverse annually a
circle in space whose diameter extends over one
hundred and ninety millions of miles. In each par-
ticular climate we behold races of animals and plants,
many of which would not prosper elsewhere. Though
apparently rains, and winds, and frosts are very irre-
gular, yet we find a remarkable constancy in the
average of the weather and seasons of each place.
Very hot summers, or very cold winters, have little
effect in raising or depressing the mean annual tem-
perature of any one climate above or below its gene-
ral standard. We must be convinced, from observa-
tion, that the structure of plants, and the nature of
many animals, are specially adapted to the climate in
which they are located. A vegetable, for example,
which flourishes when the mean temperature is fifty-
five degrees, would perish where the average is only
fifty. If our mean temperature were raised or
lowered by five degrees, our vegetable world would
be destroyed, until a new species suited to the
altered climate, should be substituted for that which
we possess at present. An inhabitant of the equa-
torial regions, whose mean temperature is eighty,
would hardly believe that vegetable life could exist in
such a climate as ours. We have the same opinion
of the arctic regions. But both are equally mistaken;
the care of a presiding Providence is limited to no
climate; it

Lives through all space, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent.

At the equator we find the natives of the Spice Islands, the clove, and nutmeg trees, pepper and mace. Cinnamon bushes clothe the surface of Ceylon; the odoriferous sandal-wood, the ebony-tree, the teak-tree, and the banyan grow in the East Indies. In the same latitudes, in Arabia the Happy, we find balm, frankincense, and myrrh, the coffee-tree and the tamarind. But in those countries, at least in the plains, the trees and shrubs which decorate our more northerly climes are wanting. And as we go northwards, at every step we change the vegetable group, both in addition and by subtraction. In the thickets to the west of the Caspian Sea we have the apricot, citron, peach, walnut. In the same latitude, in Spain, Sicily, and It is of course very improbable that any length of Italy, we find the dwarf plum, the cypress, the chesttime will elapse before the City of London, be pro- nut, the cork-tree; the orange and lemon-tree perfume vided with another "Royal Exchange;" and there the air with their blossoms; the myrtle and pomeis little reason to doubt that the new edifice will surgranate grow wild among the rocks. We cross the pass its predecessor in magnificence. The regrets of Alps, and we find the vegetation which belongs to some, that 66 we have not a Sir Christopher Wren Northern Europe, of which England is an instance. to rebuild it now," may be dissipated by the fact, The oak, the beech, and the elm, are natives of Great that Sir Christopher Wren had nothing to do with Britain; the elm-tree seen in Scotland and the north rebuilding it before; and little danger we should trust of England is the wych-elm. As we travel still is to be apprehended of our inability to produce as farther to the north, the forests again change their chaskilful an artist as Mr. Edward Jerman, notwith-racter. In the northern provinces of the Russian emstanding that he was considered by the committee in 1667, (when Sir Christopher Wren was living,) to be "the most able known artist," next to "Mr. Mills the city surveyor." At all events, there is little hazard in predicting, that ere long a new edifice will be erected, and in the conceited doggrel of an old ballad, written soon after the Great Fire of 1666,

Th' Exchange, that Royal Infant, shortly will
Her own and forreign language speak with skill,
And on that acre the noon sun shall see,
All his long travels in epitomie.

THAT which is good to be done, cannot be done too soon; and if it is neglected to be done early, it will frequently happen that it will not be done at all.-BISHOP Mant.

pire are found forests of the various species of firs, the
Scotch and spruce-fir, and the larch. In the Orkney
Islands no tree is found but the hazel, which occurs
again on the shores of the Baltic. As we proceed
into colder regions, we still find species which appear
to have been made for these situations. The hoary
or cold elder makes its appearance north of Stock-
holm ;
the sycamore and mountain-ash accompany
us to the head of the Gulf of Bothnia; and as we
leave this, and traverse the Dophrian rauge, we pass
in succession the boundary lines of the spruce-fir,
the Scotch-fir, and those minute shrubs which bota-
nists distinguish as the dwarf-birch and the dwarf-
willow. Here, near to, or within the arctic circle,

we yet find wild flowers of great beauty,—the mezereon, the yellow and white water-lily, and the European globe-flower. And when these fail us, the reindeer-moss still makes the country habitable for animals and man.

So also there are boundaries to the growth of corn, the vine, and the olive. Wheat extends over certain tracts from England to Thibet; it does not flourish in the polar regions, nor within the tropics, except in situations considerably raised above the level of the sea. The temperature required for the cultivation of the vine must not be under fifty, nor much above sixty-three degrees, though, in the warm climates, elevation of situation will correct the excess of heat. Maize and olives have their favourite regions in France, Italy, and Spain. We first meet with rice west of Milan; it extends over the northern provinces of Persia, and over all the southern districts of Asia, where there are facilities for irrigation.

Millet is one of the principal grains of Africa. Cotton is cultivated in the New World no higher than forty degrees latitude; in the Old it extends to latitude forty-four degrees, being found in Astrachan. Exceptions, indeed, occur with respect to the sugarcane, the indigo-tree, the plantain, and the mulberry, all natives of India and China; for these productions have found a genial climate in the West Indies and South America. The genuine tea-tree seems indisposed to flourish out of China, though the South American Indians have something like it. The Cassava yams, the bread-fruit-tree, the sago-palm, and the cabbage-tree, are all apparently special provisions for the islands in which they are peculiarly found to flourish.

narratives be employed for depicting scenes of vice, another evil of the greatest magnitude is likely to result from them, even though the conduct exhibited should be shown to end in remorse and misery. For by the mere familiarity with vice, an injury is done to the youthful mind, which is in no degree compensated by the moral at the close. Imagination, therefore, is a mental power of extensive influence, and capable of being turned to important purposes in the cultivation of individual character. But to be so, it must be kept under the strict control of reason and of virtue. If it be allowed to wander at discretion, through scenes of imagined wealth, ambition, frivolity, or pleasure, it tends to withdraw the mind from the important pursuits of life, to weaken the habits of attention, and to impair the judgment. It tends in a most material manner, to prevent the due exercise of those nobler powers which are directed to the cultivation both of science and virtue.

The state of a mind which has yielded itself to the influence of this delusive habit, cannot be more forcibly represented than in the words of an eloquent writer:

The influence of this habit of dwelling on the beautiful fallacious forms of imagination, will accompany the mind into the most serious speculations, or rather, musings, on the real world, and what is to be done in it, and expected; as the image which the eye acquires from looking at any dazzling object, still appears before it wherever it turns. The vulgar materials that constitute the actual economy of the world, will rise up to its sight in fictitious forms, which it cannot disenchant into plain reality, nor will even suspect to be deceptive. It cannot go about with sober, rational inspection, and ascertain the nature and value of all things around it. Indeed, such a mind is not disposed to examine, It is impossible, we think, to reflect upon all this with any careful minuteness, the real condition of things. It is content with ignorance, because environed with somevariety of natural wealth, and upon the adaptation thing more delicious than such knowledge, in the paradise of each species to the climate in which it is found, which imagination creates. In that paradise it walks dewithout perceiving that the distribution of those pro-lighted, till some imperious circumstance of real life call it ductions, no one chmate yielding a perfect substitute, generally speaking, for that of another,—was originally designed to prompt and to continue throughout human existence, that commercial and friendly intercourse which has been long since established between the inhabitants of countries the most remote from each other.—Quarterly Review.

ON READING WORKS OF IMAGINATION.

THERE has been considerable difference of opinion in regard to the effects produced upon the mind by fictitious narratives. Without entering minutely upon the merits of this controversy, I think it may be contended that two evils are likely to arise from much indulgence in works of fiction. The one is a tendency to give way to the wild play of the imagination, a practice most deleterious both to the intellectual and moral habits. The other is a disruption of the harmony which ought to exist between the moral emotions and the conduct,-a principle of extensive and important influence. In the healthy state of the moral feelings, for example, the emotion of sympathy excited by a tale of sorrow, ought to be followed by some efforts for the relief of the sufferer. When such relations in real life are listened to from time to time without any such efforts, the emotion gradually becomes weakened, and that moral condition is produced which we call selfishness, or darkness of heart. Fictitious tales of sorrow appear to have a similar tendency,-the emotion is produced without the corresponding conduct; and, when this habit has been much indulged, the result seems to be, that a cold and barren sentimentalism is produced, instead of the habit of active benevolence. If fictitious

thence, and gladly escapes thither when the avocation is past. There everything is beautiful and noble, as could be desired to form the residence of an angel. If a tenth part of the felicities that have been enjoyed, the great actions that have been performed, the beneficent institutions that have been established, and the beautiful objects that have been seen in this happy region, could have been imported into this terrestrial place, what a delightful thing it would have been to awake each morning to see such a world once

more.

To the same purpose are the words of another writer of the highest authority :out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination too much in silent speculation. He who has nothing external that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not,-for who is content with what he is? He then expatiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which, for the present moment, he should most desire; amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delight which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow. In time, some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite conception, and with the bitterness of truth. By degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish.

feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended

[ABERCROMBIE on the Intellectual Powers.]

WHATEVER God himself has pleased to think worthy of his making, its fellow-creature man should not think unworthy of his knowing.-BOYLE.

FROSTS, AND FROST FAIRS, UPON THE
RIVER THAMES.

WITHIN the last eight hundred years several instances
are recorded in our history of frosts so severe as to
render the surface of the Thames, at London, one
immoveable mass of ice; the last of them occurred
within the memory of the present generation. Upon
these occasions the river has been the scene of diver-
sions and amusements, remarkable indeed, not so
much in themselves, as from the nature of the place
in which they were practised.

As early as 1092, in the reign of William Rufus, is recorded a frost "whereby," in the words of an old chronicler," the great streams [of England] were congealed in such a manner that they could draw two hundred horsemen and carriages over them; whilst at their thawing, many bridges, both of wood and stone, were borne down, and divers water-mills broken up, and carried away." In 1281, is mentioned another frost and snow "such as no man living could remember the like;" five arches of London-bridge were on this occasion "borne downe and carried away with the streame."

were

The winter of 1564-5 was remarkable for a very severe frost which began on the 21st of December, and according to Holinshed continued to such an extremity, that on New Year's Eve "people went over and alongst the Thames on the ise from Londonbridge to Westminster."

Some plaied at the football as boldlie there as if it had beene on the drie land; diverse of the Court being then at Westminster, shot dailie at prickes set upon the Thames; and the people, both men and women, went on the Thames, in greater numbers, than in anie street of the Citie of London. On the third daie of January, at night, it began to thaw, and on the fift there was no ise to be seene betweene London Bridge and Lambeth, which sudden thaw caused great floods and high waters, that bare downe bridges and houses, and drowned manie people, in England; especiallie in Yorkshire, Owes Bridge was borne awaie with others."

The next remarkable frost recorded is that of 1608. It begun on the 8th of December, and continued until the 15th; a thaw then ensued until the 22nd, when it began "againe to freeze violently, so as divers persons went halfe way over the Thames upon the ice; and the 30th of December, at every ebbe, many people went quite over the Thames in divers places, and so continued until the 3rd of January."

Evelyn, however, who was an eye-witness of this scene, furnishes the following extraordinary account of it in his Diary, of January the 24th.

The frost continuing more and more severe, the Thames before London was still planted with boothes in formal streetes, all sortes of trades and shopes furnish'd, and ful of commodities, even to a printing-presse, where the people and ladyes tooke a fancy to have their names printed, and the day and yeare set down when printed on the Thames: this humour tooke universally, that 'twas estimated the printer gain'd 57. a day, for printing a line onely, at sixpence a name, besides what he got by ballads, &c. Coaches plied from Westminster to the Temple, and from several other staires to and fro, as in the streetes; sleds, sliding with skertes, a bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet-plays, and interludes, cookes, tipling, and other places, so that it seem'd to be a bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the

water.

Upon this occasion king Charles the Second, his
queen, and several other personages of the Royal
Family visited the diversions upon the ice; and even
had their names printed on the ice in conformity
with the "humour" which Evelyn mentions as so
prevalent. There is still in existence one of the very
papers on which the king and his royal companions
had their names printed; and we need hardly say that
among collectors of the curious, it is regarded as an
invaluable rarity. It contains the names of "Charles,
king;" his brother "James, duke" (of York) after-
wards James II.; "Katherine Queen" the Infante of
Portugal; "Mary, Dutchess;"" Mary D'Este, sister of
the duke of Modena, and second wife of James; "Ann,
Princesse," second daughter of the duke of York,
afterwards Queen Anne; and "
Denmark, her husband. The king's visit is thus noticed
George, Prince" of
in a small poem printed on the river, entitled Tha-
masis's Advice to the Painter from her Frigid Zone, or
Wonders upon the Water.

Then draw the King, who on his Leads doth stay,
To see the Throng as on a Lord Mayor's day;
And thus unto his Nobles pleas'd to say;
With these Men on this Ice, I'de undertake
To cause the Turk all Europe to forsake:
An army of these Men, arm'd and compleat,
Would soon the Turk in Christendom defeat!
The same poem contains the following advice to its
readers :-

to the Print-house go

The people passed daily betweene London and the Where Men the Art of Printing soon do know: Bankside at every halfe ebbe, for the floud removed the ice Where for a Teuster you may have your Name and forced the people daily to tread new paths, except onely Printed, hereafter for to show the same; betweene Lambeth and the ferry at Westminster, the And sure in former Ages ne'er was found which, by incessant treading, became very firm, and free A Press to print where men so oft were dround! passage, untill the great thaw; and from Sunday, the tenth of January, until the fifteenth of the same, the frost grew In 1709 the Thames was again frozen over at so extreme, as the ice became firme, and removed not, and intervals, and some persons crossed on the ice, but then all sorts of men, women, and children, went boldly the frost was not sufficiently permanent to allow upon the ice in most parts; some shot at prickes; others another Frost Fair. But in 1715-6 all the sports bowled and danced, with other variable pastimes, by reason of 1683 were renewed, the frost beginning at the of which concourse of people, there were many that set up boothes and standings upon the ice, as fruit-sellers, vic-end of November, and lasting till the 9th of February tuallers, that sold beere and wine, shoomakers, and a barber's tent, &c."

In these tents were fires. The ice lasted till the afternoon of the 2nd of February, when "it was quite dissolved and clean gon."

following.

Our engraving represents a view of the memorable Frost Fair on the Thames in the Winter of 1739-40, the most severe which had occurred since the year 1716. In the beginning of it, the houses then stand

In the winter of 1683-4 the festivities of a frosting on London Bridge received considerable damage fair were again witnessed on the Thames at London. The frost commenced in the beginning of December, and lasted until the 5th of February. The river was congealed to that degree, that another city, as it were, was created thereon; where, by the great number of streets, and shops, with their rich furniture, it represented a great fair, with a great variety of carriages, and diversions of all sorts; and near Whitehall, a whole ox was roasted on the ice."

from the many vessels which broke from their moorings and lay beating against them. On the 31st of December, it was announced in one of the newspapers that "all the watermen above the bridge have hauled their boats on shore, the Thames being very nigh frozen over." The "rocks" and "shoals" of ice which for some time floated on the river, became at length united into one solid mass, and represented "a snowy field everywhere rising in masses and hills of ice and