and ranks with the moneyless loungers of St. Paul's:--

"Though little coin thy purseless pockets line,
Yet with great company thou'rt taken up;
For often with Duke Humfray thou dost dine,
And often with Sir Thomas Gresham sup."

Here, too, above all, the monarch of English poetry must have often
paced, watching the Antonios and Shylocks of his day, the anxious
wistful faces of the debtors or the embarrassed, and the greedy anger of
the creditors. In the Bourse he may first have thought over to himself
the beautiful lines in the "Merchant of Venice" (act i.), where he so
wonderfully epitomises the vicissitudes of a merchant's life:--

"My wind, cooling my broth,
Would blow me to an ague, when I thought
What harm a wind too great might do at sea.
I should not see the sandy hour-glass run,
But I should think of shallows and of flats,
And see my wealthy Andrew dock'd in sand,
Vailing her high top lower than her ribs,
To kiss her burial. Should I go to church,
And see the holy edifice of stone,
And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks?
Which, touching but my gentle vessel's side,
Would scatter all her spices on the stream;
Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks;
And, in a word, but even now worth this,
And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought
To think on this; and shall I lack the thought,
That such a thing, bechanced, would make me sad?"

[Illustration: THE FIRST ROYAL EXCHANGE.]

Gresham seems to have died before the Exchange was thoroughly furnished,
for in 1610 (James I.) Mr. Nicholas Leete, Ironmonger, preferred a
petition to the Court of Aldermen, lugubriously setting forth that
thirty pictures of English kings and queens had been intended to have
been placed in the Exchange rooms, and praying that a fine, in future,
should be put on every citizen, when elected an alderman, to furnish a
portrait of some king or queen at an expense of not exceeding one
hundred nobles. The pictures were "to be graven on wood, covered with
lead, and then gilded and paynted in oil cullors."

In Gresham's Exchange great precautions were taken against fire.
Feather-makers and others were forbidden to keep pans of fire in their
shops. Some care was also taken to maintain honesty among the
shopkeepers, for they were forbidden to use blinds to their windows,
which might obscure the shops, or throw false lights on the article