His remains were brought to England. The Austrian, Russian, Prussian, Neapolitan, and Portuguese ambassadors assisted at his funeral; and his sons, who were deeply affected, attended him to his last resting-place. The coffin which contained his massive remains was elaborately carved and gorgeously ornamented, looking like some splendid piece of man’s cunning, destined for the boudoir of a lady, rather than the damp of the grave. His children inherit his business; but they do not inherit his position in the stock-market. They are competitors for government loans; but, though with the name remains a certain _prestige_ of its former power, they do not appear willing to entertain the extensive and complicated business in the funds in which their father delighted. The few anecdotes recorded of the gentleman whose life has been so imperfectly sketched, form a portion of many which have been carefully collected. A good life of Nathan Meyer Rothschild would be, to some future Tooke, a complete and perfect key to the financial history of the early portion of the nineteenth century.[11] The last crisis in the Stock Exchange which it is the writer’s purpose to record was that memorable era, in 1836, when a convulsion—scarcely equalled in degree, though limited in its extent—made bears and bulls alike bankrupts. For many years previous, the business of Capel Court had been decreasing. The attempts made to excite public feeling were insufficient to produce much result. Consols remained without those great and sudden movements so beneficial to the members; little was done in shares; and it was remarked that the Stock Exchange had become a monetary dead sea; that the carriage seemed likely to be exchanged for the wheelbarrow; the breaking of credit for the breaking of stones; and that, when the eagle eye of the hungry broker and jobber looked round for dupes, all was barren. At length the spell was broken. The attempt of Don Pedro to seize the crown of Portugal afforded the members an opportunity of exercising their vocation; and it has been confidently said, that, long before a loan was attempted, their money was employed in assisting the above expedition. Every art was used to blacken the character of Don Miguel. Every trick was attempted to excite sympathy for Don Pedro. Private memoirs were published, and anecdotes related. Truths were distorted, and falsehood not unfrequently perpetrated. Paragraphs made their constant appearance, in which “our ancient ally” was represented as suffering from a most intolerable tyranny. Unbearable torture and insufferable trials were the lot of the Portuguese people; darkness and dungeons the doom of the aristocracy. The Tagus was red with the blood of the populace; and the “tower of Belem,” said a writer in Fraser’s Magazine, “emitted more doubtful and indescribable sounds than its predecessor of Babel.”