each of his places of business, sixty thousand. My Uncle's affairs are publicly recognised as of the most important description. Acts of Parliament have been passed, expressly for his guidance and protection. He has a Fire and Life Assurance office of his own; and a weekly newspaper solely devoted to his business. This commercial point of greatness is the more extraordinary, from its having been obtained by means of a description of dealing by which almost every other man but My Uncle is certain to lose. To buy, and to sell, and to live by the profit, generally requires no uncommon capacity; but it demands a superior order of talents to live, as My Uncle lives, by lending.

Although My Uncle is, in a small way, on a large scale, a banker; yet he is a banker whose operations are of a much more complicated character than those now carried on in Lombard Street. The deposits upon which he issues his papers are more varied, and demand a wider range of judgment than the ordinary banker needs to exercise. He is obliged to possess an expanded practical knowledge of the value of securities, ranging over every portable article in existence. Here is one of My Uncle's notes:

This document, which is partly a voucher, partly a deposit note (and, like all deposit notes, negotiable only to a limited extent), is the result of a transaction by which a portion of the passive capital of Mr. Charles de Montague has been temporarily turned into active capital. Some demand for money has been made upon Mr. de Montague, which he has been unable to meet in money. He therefore has recourse to My Uncle, who takes his watch and appendages as security for an advance of forty shillings; on condition that Mr. de Montague shall, before the expiration of twelve months, return the said forty shillings together with interest at the rate of eight-pence per month, during the time he shall have allowed the loan to remain unpaid. Should Mr. de Montague not redeem his pledge before the specified period of twelve months is completed, then it is competent for My Uncle (after a further delay of three months) to sell the pledge by public auction, and to abstract from the proceeds, the principal and interest; but, supposing the amount realised by such sale, to be greater than the principal and interest, then it is in the power of Mr. de Montague to demand the balance from My Uncle. Should, on the other hand, Mr. de Montague's watch and appendages fetch less than the principal and interest, My Uncle must abide by the loss.

This transaction is the model of every other in which My Uncle engages. It is essentially a banking transaction. The deposit branch of his establishments, instead of receiving money on customers' account, takes in property: the issue department is solely conducted by means of specie. My Uncle's bills are, as I have said, merely deposit notes, redeemable within twelve months after date. What the Bank of England is to Her Majesty's Government; what Smith Payne, and Jones Loyd, are to the City magnates;

what Coutts and Company, and Drummonds, are to the nobility and gentry of Westminster; that My Uncle is to the De Montagues, the artisans, the labourers, and the poor of London and the suburbs generally. It is not difficult to illustrate the working of this kind of banking transaction by numerous examples, similar to that already furnished by Mr. de Montague. Take the case of Phelim O'Shea, bricklayer's labourer. A wet week or a defaulting brickmaker has thrown Phelim O'Shea temporarily out of cmployment, and his stock of cash is inadequate to meet his current expenses. Yet, although without money, he is not without means. He has a coat-a loose blue coat, long in the cuffs, with a swallow-tail, and brass-buttons rubbed black in the centre. He converts that coat into a bank deposit, and My Uncle advances him a sum of money, which enables him to meet contingent demands, until fine weather or plenty of bricks shall set him up again. In like manner, Mrs. Lavers, the char-woman, is short of shillings; but she has a fender; so, her neighbour the washerwoman, has no money at all, but is, thanks to My Uncle, a capitalist while she possesses a flat-iron. Biddle the boot-closer, has been rather idle during the early part of the week, and is proportionately pressed for time at the end of it. He works as hard as he can all Saturday, yet he has finished his job only in time to be too late, to take it home; for at nine his employer's premises are closed. Money he must have; so he takes some of the boots to My Uncle; and, on Monday, redeems them with the money he has been paid for the rest of them. The operation by which money is raised upon the coat, the fender, the flat-iron, or the new boots, is usually described as "pawnbroking;" and My Uncle is (not to mince the matter) called a Pawnboker.

My Uncle's office-or we can afford to say, shop, for My

Uncle has not the least desire to sink it-in a poor neighbourhood, is a remarkable scene, it is particulary so, on a Saturday night. The reader who should trudge with me, following the Eastern index of the church weathercocks, to My Uncle's in the region of the Commercial Road, on a Saturday night, would find another sort of interest going on there, besides the interest My Uncle is empowered by law to take. He (for the reader is of an arbitray gender, according to the cases wisely cited in the old school grammar, where it is instanced, "as we say of the sun, he is setting; or of a ship, she sails well")—he would find My Uncle's full of company. He would find the little private boxes in the shop, with bolts inside the door-supposed to be designed for bashful clients, coyly emulous of solitude-crowded with miscellaneous customers; the public portion of the shop no less so. He would find three-fourths of these attendants on My Uncle to be nieces-women-prolific in children, to judge from the babies present, and from other powerful symptoms. Enquiring of My Uncle of what class these mostly were, he would be answered, "Wives of labourers in the Docks." Hereupon his thoughts would probably go wandering down long ranges of warehouses, and wharves, and cellarage, working at windlasses and cranes, at logs of wood, at bales, at sacks, at casks, at rum and sugar, until brought back to My Uncle's by a Plump! close to him as he stood behind the counter, and the tumbling out of the wall of half-a-dozen bundles. Then, remembering that popular figure of speech, The Spout, he would enquire of My Uncle whether those bundles had been up the Spout, and were now coming down? To which My Uncle, with a forbearing smile, as one who could not expect him to be otherwise than innocent of the proprieties of the trade, would mildly make reply, "It is called the Spout, but we I call it the Well."

Then his eye would follow the bundles from the Spout to the counter, admiring to see how they were whisked away, and tossed intuitively, label upwards, by brisk jugglers of shopmen. "Now then, Flathers!" "Here!" "How many, Mrs. Flathers?" "Six." "Only three down yet." (Those three would be laid aside, and Mrs. Flathers would resign herself to more waiting.) Bailey, how many?" "One." A rapid pen-and-ink sum would be worked by the shopman on the back of the ticket. "Eighteen-pence halfpenny." Bailey would know it well beforehand-would have the exact amount ready-would depart with a bald infant son in arms (one red sock missing), and make room for Dennet.

Dennet, slatternly and aged seventeen, would produce a gown. The shopman opening it with sleight of hand, would know it at a glance. "A shilling." "Eighteen-pence." "Can't be." (6 Say one and three." Impossible." Gown slapped, thrown up, tossed over-wrapped and pinned as tight as a ship's block! Ticket and duplicate made out, sixpence and halfpence jerked from the till like water. All right! "Now Mrs. Jolly, what are you waiting for?" 'My husband's rule. I think it's behind you, Charles. Do give it me, that's a good soul, and let me go, for I've got marketing to do, and supper besides !"-" This it?""That's it, Charles !" Another rapid calculation. Eighteen-pence three farthings." Change for a shilling at a blow. Mrs. Jolly gone, and somebody come into the genteeler portion of the shop, supposed to be set aside for purchasers of articles exposed for sale. "About that table-cloth this morning." "Oh !"

Then My Uncle in person would present himself, and confront a middle-aged matron of respectable appearance, accompanied by a poor-looking girl, half servant-girl, and