daughter, and legacies amounting to about 100,000 thalers, which were to be divided equally between Jewish and Christian benevolent societies and the poor. We read in a letter of a contemporary—“Gideon is dead, and his whole inheritance is worth more than the whole of Canaan.” Another star which dawned in the commercial world about the same time, was Aaron Goldsmid. He came from Hamburg, and established himself in London, as a merchant, in the middle of the last century. The house arrived at its highest prosperity after his death, under his four sons. At the head of the business were then two brothers, Abraham and Benjamin, men of acknowledged integrity, and allied in friendship with Newland, the head cashier of the Bank of England. He was also a self-made man, who had risen from a baker’s shop to his enormously influential position. By means of Newland, the brothers Goldsmid were brought into connection with the government, which, since the year 1793, had been compelled to have recourse to continual loans, in consequence of the Continental war. But it was not only through this that they made their money. It was their cleverness and knowledge that saved them from losing money, when all over Europe great mercantile houses were breaking. One of the most notable characteristics of Benjamin was, we are told, his astonishing knowledge of firms, which was not confined merely to England, but embraced the whole money-market in or out of England. He valued, with a certainty bordering on the marvellous, every name on the back of a bill. In the panic year of 1790, the house only lost £50, when ruin swept away many of the chief firms of England and abroad. At the beginning of the present century, there was no house greater, or more universally esteemed; and yet the end was tragic in the extreme. One morning in April, 1808, Benjamin Goldsmid hung himself in his bed-room. In 1810, the elder brother, Abraham, in conjunction with the house of Baring, embarked in a government loan of £14,000,000. The business failed; the house of Baring survived the crash; but Abraham Goldsmid shot himself when he found how true it was that riches take to themselves wings, and fly away. Here is a story of an alderman, extracted from _Maloniana_. When the late Mr. Pitt, or Alderman Beckford, made a strong attack on the late Sir William Baker, alderman of London, charging him with having made an immense sum by a fraudulent contract, he got up very quietly, and gained the House to his side by this short reply: “The honourable gentleman is a great orator, and has made a long and serious charge against me. I am no orator, and shall therefore only answer it in two words—Prove it.” Having thus spoken, he sat down; but there was something in his tone and manner that satisfied the House the charge was a calumny.