ilure is to be attributed. For the last ten
years every effort has been made to redeem the loss thus occasioned,
but this has only been partially accomplished. The assets of the
bank are, however, still very considerable, and there are real
estates of great value belonging to the bank, and but slightly
encumbered. We hope that in now suspending payment we shall be
considered as taking the best and only step to ensure a just and
equal distribution of our assets among our creditors."

Upon a full investigation of the state of affairs, it was found that the
total amount of liabilities amounted to the large sum of L1,007,000, and
that the assets consisted chiefly of landed and mining properties of a
very speculative nature. There was also a very large amount of overdrawn
balances due from customers. After many projects had been launched, it
was announced that the committee of investigation had, subject to the
approval of the general body of creditors, disposed of the entire assets
to the directors of the Joint Stock Bank, they undertaking to pay the
creditors of Attwood and Co., in immediate cash, a dividend of 11s. 3d.
in the pound. This arrangement was carried into effect, and "Attwood's
Bank" became a memory only. Mr. Henry Marshall is, however, still living
in retirement at Weston-Super-Mare, and is, notwithstanding his great
age, in vigorous health, both of mind and body.

The old familiar premises have now, too, passed away. The inconvenient
old office, with its rows of leather buckets, and its harmless array of
antiquated blunderbuses; its old-fashioned desks, dark with age, and
begrimed with ink spattered by successive generations of bygone clerks;
the low ceiling and quaint elliptic arches; the little fire-place near
the counter, where Aurelius Attwood, with his good-humoured face, used
to stand warming his coat-tails, and greeting the customers as they came
in, were all so much in harmony with the staid, gray-headed clerks, and
the quiet, methodical ways of the place, that when there, one might
fancy he had stepped back for fifty years, or was looking upon a
picture by Hogarth.

It was stated a few pages back that the Bank of England, after the
great panic of 1825, consented to forego their exclusive privilege
of joint-stock banking. This, however, was not done without an
equivalent, for the Act of 1826, ratifying this consent, gave them the
power of establishing branch banks in the l