Many years before his death, Mr. George Virtue parted with the business to his son, Mr. James Sprent Virtue, the present head of the firm. On the 8th December, 1868, George Virtue, senior, died in his seventy-sixth year, having earned the respect of all the hundreds to whom he afforded employment, and of the outside world; for all recognised that integrity and strict justice to his _employés_ was a main cause of his success, while his prosperity had been aided by thorough business habits and intense application to his duties. He had been one of the representatives of the ward of Farringdon Without in the Common Council of the City of London for many years, and was held in the highest esteem by his fellow-citizens. It was in his civic capacity that he was invited by the Viceroy of Egypt, with other members of the Corporation, to pay a visit to that country, an honour which his constant attention to his public duties had fully merited in selecting him as one of the representatives of the City of London on that occasion. [Illustration] [Illustration] _THOMAS TEGG_: BOOK-AUCTIONEERING AND THE “REMAINDER TRADE.” Thomas Tegg[28] was born at Wimbledon, in Surrey, on the 4th of March, 1776. His father was a grocer, who not only was successful in business, but “wore a large wig,” was a Latin scholar, and something of a mathematician; he died, however, when his son was only five years old, and was speedily followed by his wife, and the poor little lad “found it to be a dreadful thing when sorrow first takes hold of an orphan’s heart.” For the sake of economy, he was sent to Galashiels, in Selkirkshire, where he was boarded, lodged, clothed, and educated for ten guineas per annum. This severance from all home ties was at first more than the little orphan could bear, and many a time, he tells us, did he steal off to the quiet banks of the Tweed, and cry himself to sleep in his loneliness. A scrap of paper, which had been given him before leaving home, bearing the magic word “London,” was carefully treasured in all his wanderings, and in the associations it called up, in the hopes it excited in all his wondering, childish dreams, proved a soothing solace to his troubles. His schoolmaster, too, was a kind-hearted man, who made a point of studying each boy’s individual character, and of educating each for his individual calling. Ruling by “kindness rather than by flagellation,” he frequently took his pupils for country rambles, and taught them lessons out of the great book of Nature. Nor was he wholly forgotten by his relatives, for we read that he was sent a parcel of tea--then a wonderful luxury. After much consultation as to the best method of cooking the delicacy, one-half of it was boiled in the “big pot,” the liquor strained off and the leaves served up as greens; “but,” he adds, “it was not eaten.” After staying at Galashiels for four years, he was given the choice of being