For a considerable number of years, many, who, not members of the Stock Exchange, yet dealt in its securities and acted as brokers, employed the Rotunda of the Bank of England for their transactions. The broker who had no counting-house made it his place of business; and his clients waited there until the transfer was ready, or the business was arranged. As a theatre for jobbing, it interfered with the Bank; but Mr. Curtis, governor of that establishment, turned them out somewhat unceremoniously; and, when he afterwards failed in business, so great was his unpopularity with those he had summarily dismissed, that the news of his bankruptcy was received with three cheers by the members of the Stock Exchange. It is impossible to give a fact more suggestive of the manners of the men from whom so disgraceful a token of triumph emanated. The great increase in the business of the foreign funds called for additional space; a room was, therefore, opened for the dealers; and from this arose the Foreign Stock Exchange, which for some years maintained a separate committee, chairman, and deputy-chairman. It now forms part of the edifice known as the Stock Exchange. The number of members varies. It has reached 1,000, it has descended to 400, and it now numbers about 800. CHAPTER XVI. _Sketch of the Life of Rothschild.—Comes to England.—Introduction of Foreign Loans.—Large Purchases.—Anecdotes concerning Rothschild.—His Difficulties and Annoyances.—His Death and Burial.—Last Crisis on the Stock Exchange._ The eminent abilities of Nathan Meyer Rothschild were inherited from his father, who, educated for the synagogue, distinguished himself as a financier, and, though engaged in the uncongenial sphere of a counting-house, became a learned archæologist. Frankfort, Berlin, Vienna, London, Naples, and Paris, have alike witnessed the prescience of the money-making Rothschilds; and it is reported that the first great success of Meyer Anselm, the father of the house, originated in the possession of the fortune of the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, which he saved from the grasp of Napoleon, and which must have been to a commercial man of the utmost importance.[7]