We may be very sure that at the meetings which took place at ‘The Mermaid,’ and at those where Ben Jonson’s sons sat around him in ‘The Apollo,’ the English language ripened into mellowness, beauty, and strength. Shakespeare, Raleigh, and the men whose sympathies were attuned to those of the soldier and the poet, must have done especially good work to that end during their joyous discussions at ‘The Mermaid.’ Politics do not seem to have been touched upon. The first club founded in London with a political purpose among its other objects was the Rota Club. More than two centuries have elapsed since the Rota saw its table and coffee-cups surrounded by such men as Milton, Cyriac Skinner (to whom Milton addressed the sonnet which urges play as well as work), Marvel, Harrington, Nevill, and very many others. They advocated a going-out of Members of Parliament by _rotation_, and used a ballot-box for the settlement of club questions--that is to say, they affirmed or negatived by that means the conclusions arrived at by the lecturer for the evening. They also supported the ballot, as the simplest and truest method of voting, generally. To this end we are only on the point of now coming partially. There were some clubs that, meeting only for recreation, fell into a fixed purpose by accident. Small clubs they were, but they were the beginnings of great consequences. From the meeting together of a few ‘city gentlemen,’ members of the Wednesday Club, in the reign of William III., arose certain discussions on financial matters which led to the ‘Conferences’ of 1695, in which William Paterson took a leading part. From this club, its discussions and conferences, sprang a gigantic result--‘The Old Lady in Threadneedle Street;’ in other words, the Bank of England.