ible time, necessarily drove down the prices. In an
incredibly short time they fell to 74; immediately on which, Mr. ----
claimed of Rothschild his stock at 70. The Jew could not refuse: it was
in the bond. This climax being reached, the banker bought in again all
the stock he had previously sold out, and advised his friends to
re-purchase also. They did so; and the result was, that in a few weeks
Consols reached 84 again, their original price, and from that to 86.
Rothschild's losses were very great by this transaction; but they were
by no means equal to the banker's gains, which could not have been less
than L300,000 or L400,000.

The following grotesque sketch of the great Rothschild is from the pen
of a clever anonymous writer:--"The thing before you," says the author
quoted, "stands cold, motionless, and apparently speculationless, as the
pillar of salt into which the avaricious spouse of the patriarch was
turned; and while you start with wonder at what it can be or mean, you
pursue the association, and think upon the fire and brimstone that were
rained down. It is a human being of no very Apollo-like form or face:
short, squat, with its shoulders drawn up to its ears, and its hands
delved into its breeches'-pockets. The hue of its face is a mixture of
brick-dust and saffron; and the texture seems that of the skin of a dead
frog. There is a rigidity and tension in the features, too, which would
make you fancy, if you did not see that that were not the fact, that
some one from behind was pinching it with a pair of hot tongs, and that
it were either afraid or ashamed to tell. Eyes are usually denominated
the windows of the soul; but here you would conclude that the windows
are false ones, or that there is no soul to look out at them. There
comes not one pencil of light from the interior, neither is there one
scintillation of that which comes from without reflected in any
direction. The whole puts you in mind of 'a skin to let;' and you wonder
why it stands upright without at least something within. By-and-by
another figure comes up to it. It then steps two paces aside, and the
most inquisitive glance that ever you saw, and a glance more inquisitive
than you would ever have thought of, is drawn out of the erewhile fixed
and leaden eye, as if one were drawing a sword from a scabbard. The
visiting figure, which has the appearance of coming by accident, and not
by design, stops but a second or two, in the course of which