Trite, if sad commonplaces these, to which the world listens, if at
all, with impatient indifference. I have not a very strong faith in
the soundness of the commercial evangel upon this subject; still, the
very last task I should set myself would be a sermon denunciative of
mammon-worship--mammon-love--mammon-influence--and so on; and this
for two quite sufficient reasons--one, that I have myself, I
blushingly confess, a very strong partiality for notes of the
governor and company of the Bank of England and sovereigns of full
weight and fineness; the other, that the very best and fiercest
discourse I ever heard fulminated against the debasing love of gold,
especially characteristic, it is said, of these degenerate days, was
delivered by a gentleman who, having lived some seventy useful and
eloquent years at the rate of about three hundred a year or
thereabout, was found to have died worth upwards of L.60,000, all
secured by mortgages bearing 7 per cent interest on the Brazilian
slave-estates of a relative by marriage. But as an illustration of
power--and power under any form of development has a singular
fascination for most minds--I have thought it may not be
uninteresting to glance briefly at a few of the more salient features
of the metropolitan mammoth markets.
Standing, then, by the statue of the Iron Duke, we have the Royal
Exchange directly in front, Princes Street and the Poultry
immediately behind, Lombard Street and Cornhill on the right,
Threadneedle Street and Lothbury on the left hand.
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