Insurance Offices.—These form another extensive group, which has conduced much to the improved street appearance of modern London. All the best conducted Life and Fire Insurance Companies are wealthy; and they have devoted part of their wealth to the construction of commodious and often elegant offices. The _County_, the _Royal Exchange_, the _Sun_, the _Phœnix_, the _Amicable_, the _Equitable_, the _Imperial_, are among the most noted of these insurance offices. The chief buildings are within a small circle, of which the Royal Exchange is the centre; another group is about Fleet Street and Blackfriars; and a western group lies in and near the Regent Street line. Stock Exchange.—This building, of which scarcely anything can be seen on the outside, lies up a paved passage called Capel Court, in Bartholomew Lane, on the east side of the Bank of England. Dealers and brokers in the public funds, and in all kinds of joint-stock shares and debentures, meet and transact business here. They buy and sell, not only for themselves, but for the public generally; and the amount of business transacted every day is enormous. The establishment is maintained by about 900 members, who pay £10 a-year each. They endeavour to enforce strict honesty in each other’s dealings; but they sedulously refuse to allow a stranger even to pass the threshold of their Temple of Wealth. Various Commercial Buildings.—A stranger has only to look at a detailed map or a directory, to see how numerous are the buildings, especially in the city, applied in various ways to commerce and trading on a large scale. The _Trinity House_ on _Tower Hill_; the chambers of the building that was once the _South Sea House_, near Leadenhall Street; those of the large but irregular structure called _Gresham House_, in Bishopsgate Street—are all worthy of a glance, some for their architectural character, and all for the importance of the work transacted in them. The _East India House_, in Leadenhall Street, has been pulled down; commercial chambers in great number, and let at enormous rentals, have been built on the site.