The demand for gold at the Bank of England continued, but less fiercely; and as the ingots still came tumbling in, and the Mint hailed sovereigns on them, their stock of specie rose as the demand declined, and they came out of their fiercest battle with honor. But, ere the tide turned, things in general came to a pass scarcely known in the history of civilized nations. Ladies and gentlemen took heirlooms to the pawnbrokers', and swept their tills of the last coin. Not only was wild speculation, hitherto so universal and ardent, snuffed out like a candle, but investment ceased and commerce came to a stand-still. Bank stock, East India stock, and, some days, consols themselves, did not go down; they went out, were blotted from the book of business. No man would give them gratis; no man would take them on any other terms. The brokers closed their books; there were no buyers nor sellers. Trade was coming to the same pass, except the retail business in eatables; and an observant statesman and economist, that watched the phenomenon, pronounced that in forty-eight hours more all dealings would have ceased between man and man, or returned to the rude and primitive form of barter, or direct exchange of men's several commodities, labor included. Finally, things crept into their places; shades of distinction were drawn between good securities and bad. Shares were forfeited, companies dissolved, bladders punctured, balloons flattened, bubbles burst, and thousands of families ruined--thousands of people beggared--and the nation itself, its paper fever reduced by a severe bleeding, lay sick, panting, exhausted, and discouraged for a year or two to await the eternal cycle--torpor, prudence, health, plethora, blood-letting; torpor, prudence, health, plethora, bloodletting, etc., etc., etc., etc., _in secula seculorum._ The journals pitched into “speculation.” Three banks lay in the dust in the town of ----, and Hardie & Son stood looking calmly down upon the ruins. Richard Hardie had carried out his double-headed plan.