hty hundred-pound shares; each share at this time being worth 1,300
pounds. This, I believe, is the only metropolitan market for corn,
grain, and seeds. The market days are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday;
hours, ten to three. Wheat is paid for in bills at one month, and other
corn and grain in bills at two months. The Kentish hoymen,
distinguishable by their sailors' jackets, have stands free of expense,
and pay less for metage and dues than others, and the Essex dealers enjoy
some privileges; in both cases said to be in consideration of the men of
Kent and Essex having continued to supply the city when it was ravaged by
the plague. Old Mark-lane consists of an open Doric colonnade, within
which the factors have their stands. It resembles the atrium, or place
of audience in the Pompeian house, with its impluvium, the place in the
centre in which the rain fell. In this market, managed by a committee
and secretary, there was no foreign competition. At this time there are
about seventy-two stands, and more than a hundred subscribers of five
guineas each. I believe the stands are from thirty to forty pounds a
year. Now at one time this place was quite a close borough. There were
more factors than the place could hold, and when a stand was vacant it
was given to some poor broken-down man, who would not be likely to
interfere with the jolly business which the rest were carrying on. The
excluded were very indignant. They planted themselves in Mark-lane.
They did business in the street outside the Exchange. They were men of
equal standing and respectability with any of the privileged; and after
an immense amount of grumbling and growling, they did as most Englishmen
would have done--went to Parliament, and got an Act to have a second
Exchange erected side by side with the old one. This second erection was
completed in 1826, and in the partition are now a couple of arches, which
were placed there in order that, if at any time the old Exchange were
amalgamated with the new--a consummation of which there seems no chance
at present--the whole may be formed into one capacious market. The new
Exchange has a central Grecian Doric portico, surmounted by imperial arms
and agricultural emblems, the ends having corresponding pilasters. Here
lightermen and granary-keepers have stands as well as corn merchants,
factors, and millers. At the further end of this building there is a
seed-market; nor is this all. Attached to the n