"My Bills of Exchange oblige me now and then to take a turn to the Royal-Exchange, in a hackney-coach, to meet my merchant. These coaches are very necessary conveniencies not to be met with any where abroad; for you know that at Paris, Brussels, Rome or Vienna, you must either hire a coach by the day, or take it at least by the hour: but here you have coaches at the corner of every street, which for a shilling will carry you any where within a reasonable distance; and for two, from one end of the City to the other. There are eight hundred of them licensed by Act of Parliament, and carry their number on their coaches; so that if you should chance to leave any thing in a coach, and know but the number of it, you know presently where to lay your claim to it; and be you ever so late at a friend's house in any place of this great City, your friend, by taking the number of the coach, secures your safety home. "The Royal-Exchange is the resort of all the trading part of this City, foreign and domestic, from half an hour after one, till near three in the afternoon; but the better sort generally meet in Exchange-alley a little before, at three celebrated Coffee-houses, called Garraway's, Robin's, and Jonathan's. In the first, the people of quality who have business in the City, and the most considerable and wealthy Citizens, frequent. In the second, the Foreign Banquiers, and often even Foreign Ministers. And in the third, the buyers and sellers of Stock. "When I entered into this last, I was afraid I had got into Little-man's Coffee-house again; for busy faces run about here as there, with the same sharp intent looks, with the difference only, that here it is selling of Bank-stock, East-India, South-Sea, and Lottery Tickets, and there it is all cards and dice. "You will see a fellow in shabby clothes selling ten or twelve thousand pounds in stock, though perhaps he may not be worth at the same time ten shillings, and with as much zeal as if he were a Director, which they call selling a Bear-skin; and these men find bubbles enough to get bread by it, as the others do by gaming; and some few of them manage it so, as to get pretty large estates. "Near this Exchange are two very good French eating-houses, the one at the sign of Pontack, a President of the Parliament of Bourdeaux, from whose name the best French clarets are called so, and where you may bespeak a dinner from four or five shillings a-head to a guinea, or what sum you please; the other is Caveack's, where there is a constant ordinary, as abroad, for all comers without distinction, and at a very reasonable price.