Entered in “Memoirs” and “Diaries,” it is really wonderful what a volume of recollections and statements there are relating to City ways and City life. Every one, of course, comes to London, and is more or less connected with that great hive of industry and enterprise known as “the City.” One of the latest anecdotes is the following, relating to the origin of a great City house, to which in these scraps we have before adverted:—“On the 1st of January, 1818,” writes Mr. Macaulay, “a new tragedy was produced at Covent Garden. The author, John Dillon, a very young man, was the librarian of Dr. Simmons, of Paddington, famous for a very splendid collection of valuable books. With great promise of dramatic power, as evinced in this his first essay, he wisely left the poet’s idle trade for the more lucrative pursuits of commerce, and became partner in the well-known firm of Morrison, Dillon, and Co. This play was called _Retribution_, and the chief weight of which—in a very powerful character, Varanes—was on the shoulders of O’Neill. Charles Kemble and Terry were his supporters—the villain of the story being well represented.” In the person of Mr. Frank Dillon the artistic taste of the father has proved itself to be hereditary. Another money-making man was the founder of the Baring family. The origin of them in England is to be traced to Johan Baring, son of a Lutheran pastor in Bremen. Johan, when still a lad of sixteen or seventeen, came to England, engaged for a few years in clerkly duties, studied hard, amassed a little money, and finally settled down as a cloth merchant and manufacturer, in a little village near Exeter. He had four sons; and the third of them, Francis, born 1740, came to London, where, after finishing his education at Mr. Fuller’s academy in Lothbury, he set up in business as an importer of wool and dye-stuffs, also acting as agent for the original family cloth factory. “Starting,” writes Mr. Frederick Martin, “with a fixed determination to become rich, and having a fair amount of money to begin with, he was uniformly successful in all his designs. Nothing failed that he undertook, and whatever he touched became gold. Having amassed a fortune by dealing in cloth, wool, and dye-stuffs, he resolved to quintuple the fortune by dealing in money itself—that is, to be a banker.” As was natural, the successful man became also the honoured man—a leading director of the East India Company, and the friend and adviser of the premier, Lord Shelburne, who invariably followed his counsels in matters of finance. After obtaining a seat in parliament for Exeter, the son of Johan Baring was made a baronet, under patent of May 29th, 1793, by William Pitt, Shelburne’s successor in the government, after the short interregnum of the Duke of Portland. Valuing the friendship of the shrewd man of finance, William Pitt, as much as the Earl of Shelburne, listened to the counsel of Sir