rich or poor, her influence is unbounded, if it be properly exercised: it is possible to combine a perfect fulfilment of arduous, literary, or other labour, with a devout and fitting attention to the more pleasing duties of a homecherishing life; still, those women are certainly the happiest whose occupations and pleasures are strictly of a domestic nature; but no woman pursues a safe course who calculates her happiness to consist in any but the path of duty, while she remembers that the road to real renown lies not through mental endowments, however brilliant, or intellectual achievements, however great. The whole career of Mrs. Hannah More is a striking example of what can be effected by one woman—a woman neither high-born, nor wealthy, nor beautiful, nor, in what is understood to constitute genius, as highly gifted as many others whose names are histories: her dramas have had no sustaining power to keep the stage, and her poems, as poems, are little more than amusing trifles; but her Cheap Repository,' her book on Female Education,' her Thoughts on the Manners of the Great,' her Christian Morals,' her 'Spirit of Prayer,'' Hints on the Education of a Princess, Character of St. Paul,' and her Practical Piety,' despite, as we have said, some occasional conventionalities, are the temples in which her memory is enshrined; and when we recal the formation of those Poor Schools,-when we remember that neither the time bestowed upon them, nor upon her literary pursuits, prevented her fulfilling her duty to the

'Great Father of all,'

in whom she lived, moved, and had her being,'-when we learn how faithfully her domestic duties were discharged, while she was the benefactor of the poor, and the instructor of the ignorant,-when we remember what she was to society, and recal the kind, playful unostentatious womanliness, of her nature, we do greatly rejoice in the triumph of usefulness; we gaze with reverence upon the clear beacon-fire she kindled, so different from the phantom lights that dazzle and betray; and we recommend most earnestly to our countrywomen the study of such a life, and its consequences, as opposed to the malaria of those unhealthy influences which, born of a degraded woman of genius, have, of late years, crawled from France into the literature of England.

THE TOMB OF SIR THOMAS GRESHAM.

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HE 'Merchant Princes of England!' How much loftier is the sound than that of Millionaire,' by which it has become the fashion to designate our monied traders! It recals to us the great men of History, who, though dealers and chapmen, were the counsellors of kings, representatives of the people, and held rule over the empire of the seas; men, great, because their purposes were greater; originating vast improvements, increasing national power, augmenting natural resources, promoting mighty changes for the general good; helping social progress, nourishing intellectual advancement, sustaining rational liberty, and pouring wealth into the lap of public necessity!

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There is something almost magnificent in the term- Merchant Princes!' and it is well to go back and consider what they did, and how they stood, in old times, both in relation to their own and foreign governments: it may be especially necessary to do so now; to permit ourselves to halt,' in the course we are pursuing with a rapidity that infers danger, and which, from the multiplicity of objects that fit by us, permits little leisure for that contemplation and repose of thought which strengthen the mind and refresh the spirit: we allow ourselves no space for comparison between past and present,' but rush onward,-onward, not unlike the wild huntsman of the poet's dream-pursued by, and following, phantoms! With facilities for accomplishing nearly as much in a minute as it would have taken our grave fur-coated ancestors to get through in an hour, it is well to ponder, and ask

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if we perform our duties as ably as they performed theirs. Let us, in this spirit, ramble, in imagination, through the Old City; examine its narrow limits ; consider its mighty deeds, and recal the doings of its chief of Merchant Princes in the days of Elizabeth.

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Lombard Street for centuries has been noted in City history; but the venerable Stow tells us that the 'feat of Merchandize' was not the only one performed there, and complains that the Pope's merchants chaffered there for their commodities; holding good markets for their wafer cakes' sanctified at Rome, and their pardons.' This street entertained its name before the reign of Edward II. Thus, it carries us back to the close of the thirteenth century, when with the same freedom of expression that the term 'Indians' is used by ourselves, our forefathers, by the general appellation of Lombards, designated the merchants of the four republics of Genoa, Florence, Lucca, and Venice. No doubt, we procured many of our foreign luxuries by the primitive mode of barter, but this intercourse in due time invented bills of exchange, and from such small beginnings arose that gigantic trade, the incalculable results of which now surround us on every side.' There must have been rare jostling, and much confusion of tongues among the foreign mercers* in those old times, beneath the walls high and strong, and the deep-set windows of the stately street, at morning-time, when Merchants had no other place of meeting for the despatch of commercial business, until noon, when they retreated to their dinners, meeting again in the evening to form their calculations and talk of their argosies, and debate of the value of Flanders' goods, and discourse of the great influence and mighty power of the Low Countries, and the riches and marvels of great Antwerp; speculating (and that in whispers, for it was not considered courteous, nor, if truth must be told, over-safe, in those days, to speak too freely of the 'powers that were ') upon the royal affairs of the nation. The evil spirit of intolerance was abroad; all men did not consider

The words mercer and merchant-adventurer are familiar to many persons, who perhaps do not attach a very definite idea to either term: by the former appellation in remote times was meant any dealer in small wares; but as the commerce of this country became extended, the operations of the mercers assumed a more important character, and the words mercer and merchant became nearly synonymous. Sir Richard Whittington was a member of the Mercers' Company, as was Sir Geoffry Bullen, maternal uncle to Queen Elizabeth.'-Burgon's Life of Sir Thomas Gresham.

their souls, much less their lives, in their own keeping; and Elizabeth retained enough of this old feeling to infuse into her nature and her actions a spirit of persecution to the full as bitter as that which stirred her far less famous sister.

Lombard Street is as dingy now as the gravest citizen could desire; and its heavy traffic is rarely interrupted by the aspect of foreign intercourse. The round beaver and shapeless' paletot' generalise all Europeans; classes and countries are mingled: there is a brotherhood of interests, if not of affections; all are banded in pursuit of commercial gold, rather than commercial glory,—that gold which is the mightiest leveller of all distinctions! We are jostled by a want of ceremony which reminds us that we are on the City-side' of Temple Bar. Records on records of the past are, to this hour, hid away in curious chests and old Halls, which the wayfarer, passing through the every-day street-business of London, never dreams of. He sees the traffic and the mart: the great outline of London commerce is spread before him; but he knows nothing-sees nothing-of that which is imbedded behind the shops and dwellings of the citizens. He walks over the Roman way' by Bow Church, oblivious of all save the great bell of Bow; and the echo of the past is lost amid the rolling of carriages and the still mightier hum of the teeming City. He looks at the grasshopper of the Royal Exchange, and hardly bestows a thought on its noble founder SIR THOMAS GRESHAM-who so bravely laboured for the renown of his city and the glory of his country. And, truly, the rare old Knight is what artists and moralists would call 'a fine study:' his deeds are as the jewels of Commercial History. To ponder over the perfectness of a life, not only so actively and so usefully spent, but leaving such records of an enlarged and beautifully constructed mind, is invigorating-and pregnant with the lessons Example teaches. His is one of those 'pedestals ' of history which elevate not only a class, but the whole human family; and prove, if it were questioned, that nobility of soul is not bounded by the artificial limits of rank. The Merchant Prince of our good City was a statesman as well as a merchant; he even resided for a short time at a foreign court, in the capacity of ambassador, and both at home and abroad was the companion and correspondent of princes and nobles. Claiming descent from an old Norfolk family, tradition points out the ruins of a once

fortified mansion, near Gresham Church, as the residence of his ancestors, who had also another estate nearer the sea, in the county of Norfolk. Stow tells us, in his Survey,' of the liberality of one of his uncles, who was buried in our Lady Chapel, in the Church of St. Pancras, Bow Lane; and though the family found occupation and wealth in London, there can be little doubt that Sir Thomas imbibed much of his knowledge of the Flemish character, afterwards so useful to him, in Norfolk, where, besides their manufactures, the Flemings brought with them the arts of their country.*

After a lapse of more than three centuries the means of developing the actions of even so luminous a light as Sir Thomas Gresham must be much impaired.

The magnificent Exchange, built upon the model of the one at Antwerp, t has been twice burned down. His noble foundation of Gresham College was provided for in the amplest manner, and to it he devoted his own splendid mansion in Bishopsgate Street. Nor did his generous nature forget, even in the renown that accompanied such gifts, the wants of the

* Of which, traces are visible to this day, in the painted screens wherewith they decorated many of the churches of Norfolk.

The Bourse at Antwerp, the first structure of the kind in Europe, the great centre of European commerce in the 15th and 16th centuries, within which spacious area Gresham had often trod and thought over the want of such a building for the thriving merchants of London, was built in 1531. The architecture is of that familiar and enriched character, known as the Renaissance, in which the features of the Gothic are almost lost among the fanciful enrichments of the Italian and other styles; and which has induced a late writer to remark, that the Bourse is absolutely Moorish in its arrangements, and even in its detail.' The open arcade is roofed by intricate and beautiful groining, and is supported by pillars, all of which are covered with minute carving of varied and elaborate design. The population of Antwerp in Gresham's time was estimated at 100,000 persons, and traders from all nations permanently resided there. It obtained its trading eminence by a political quarrel, and lost its position by the same means. In 1482 the port of Sluys was blocked up in consequence of the disputes between the bourgeois of Bruges and the Archduke Maximilian, and the trade, of which Bruges had been the centre, was transferred to Antwerp; which then became the great European market for all Eastern natural and manufactured commodities, and the trade of England with Spain was entirely accomplished through this Flemish mart. In consequence of the great contest between Spain and the Low Countries, and the disastrous commotions thereupon, Antwerp was pillaged in 1585 by the Duke of Parma's troops, who blocked the Scheldt, and destroyed its commerce; and the merchantmen, seeking refuge in other cities, spread its once exclusive traffic into other channels, and Antwerp ceased to be the focus of European trade. It exhibits to this day the glories of its ancient renown.