In 1771, the result of reckless trading was apparent; and Douglas, Heron, & Co. failed. The shock was felt throughout the empire. The Royal Bank of Scotland tottered to its base; the banking-houses of England shook with a well-grounded fear; and the great corporation of the Bank of England was beset on all sides for assistance, but from none more vehemently than from Mr. Fordyce, of the house of Neale, Fordyce, & Co.,—a firm which, from its position, the importance assumed by its partners, and the known success of some of its speculations, was generally supposed to be beyond suspicion. The career of the man who thus craved assistance was somewhat out of the ordinary way of his craft, and may, perhaps, prove interesting, as the sketch of an adventurer in whose power it lay to make or mar the fortunes intrusted to him; and also as a specimen of the mode in which the Stock Exchange is sometimes resorted to by bankers with the balances of their customers. Bred a hosier at Aberdeen, Alexander Fordyce found the North too confined for any extensive operations, and, repairing to London as the only place worthy his genius, obtained employment as clerk to a city banking-house. Here he displayed great facility for figures, with great attention to business, and rose to the post of junior partner in the firm of Roffey, Neale, & James. Scarcely was he thus established, ere he began to speculate in the Alley, and generally with marked good fortune. “The Devil tempts young sinners with success”;—