Temple Bar was doomed to destruction by the City as early as 1790, through the exertions of Alderman Picket. “Threatened men live long,” says an old Italian proverb. Temple Bar still stands[3] a narrow neck to an immense decanter; an impeder of traffic, a venerable nuisance, with nothing interesting but its associations and its dirt. But then let us remember that as Holborn Hill has tormented horses and drivers ever since the Conquest, and its steepness is not yet in any way mitigated,[4] we must not expect hasty reforms in London. It does not enter into my purpose (unless I walked like a crab, backwards) to give the history of Child’s bank. Suffice it for me to say that it stands on part of the site of the old Devil Tavern, kept by old Simon Wadloe, where Ben Jonson held his club. It was taken down in 1788, and Child’s Place built in its stead.[5] Alderman Backwell, who was ruined by the shutting up of the Exchequer in the reign of Charles II., and became a partner in this, the oldest banking-house in London, was the agent for Government in the sale of Dunkirk to the French. Pepys makes frequent allusions to his friend Child, probably one of the founders of this bank. The Duke of York opposed his interference in Admiralty matters, and had a quarrel with a gentleman who declared that whoever impugned Child’s honesty must be a knave. Child wrote an enlightened work on Indian trade, supporting the interests of the East India Company. Apollo Court, exactly opposite the bank, marks a passage that once faced the Apollo room, from whose windows Ben Jonson must have often glowered and Herrick laughed. Archenholz says that in his day there were forty-eight bankers in London. “The Duke of Marlborough,” writes the Prussian traveller, “had some years ago in the hands of Child the banker, a fund of ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand pounds. Drummond had often in his hands several hundred thousand pounds at one time belonging to the Government.”[6] In the earliest London Directory (1677),[7] among “the goldsmiths that keep running cashes,” we find “Richard Blanchard and Child, at the Marygold in Fleet Street.” The huge marigold (really a sun in full shine), above four feet high, the original street-sign of the old goldsmiths at Temple Bar, is still preserved in one of the rooms of Child’s bank.