The most ancient Bourse in France is said to be that of Lyons; and the next ancient that of Toulouse, which dates from 1549. The Bourse of Rouen was established a few years later, while that of Paris was not legally constituted until 1724. Paris, nevertheless, has possessed since the sixteenth century several places of exchange: now on the Pont au Change, now in the courtyard of the Palais de Justice, and then for a considerable time at the Hôtel de Soissons, in the Rue Quincampoix, which was the scene of the wild speculations in connection with Law's Mississipi scheme. In 1720 the Hôtel de Soissons was closed by the Government, and the formation of an institution to be called the Bourse was at the same time decreed. The Bourse was at first installed in the Hôtel de Nevers, in the Rue Richelieu, where the National Library is now established. After the Revolution, the Bourse was for a time closed by the Convention. But it was soon re-opened, and under the Directory was located in the Church of the Petits Pères. Under the Consulate and the Empire the Bourse was held in the Palais Royal. The Restoration moved it to the Rue Feydau, and it there remained until in 1826 it was definitively fixed in the palatial abode which it now occupies. The cost of building the Bourse as it now exists was defrayed by a subscription among the merchants of Paris, assisted by a grant from the State and from the city. Until Napoleon's time, or, at least, from the period of the Revolution to that of the Empire, the occupation of stockbroker or _agent de change_ was free to all who chose to take out a licence. Napoleon, however, limited the number of _agents de change_, or, as it turned out, the number of their firms, for it soon became the practice for several persons to club together in order to buy the necessary licence and to deposit the caution money. The Bourse, in marked opposition to the rigid rule observed at our own Stock Exchange, was open to everyone until 1856, when the price of admission was fixed at one franc to the financial, and half a franc to the commercial department. An annual ticket of admission could be obtained for 150 francs to the financial side, and seventy-eight francs to the commercial. This species of tax was imposed with the view of restraining the passion for speculation which had sprung up among the lower classes, but it was abolished by M. Achille Fould, Napoleon III.'s able Finance Minister, in 1862. The hours of the Bourse, as fixed by law, not being sufficiently long for the tastes or necessities of speculators, supplementary bourses under the name of _Petite Bourse_, have from time to time been held in the Passage de l'Opéra and on the Boulevard des Italiens. These informal assemblies are sometimes tolerated, sometimes repressed, by the Government. Ponsard, in one of his versified comedies, describes the Paris Bourse as (to translate the poet freely)--