Clement had never seen anything like it, and he viewed it with awe, his ears deafened by the babel or pierced by the shrill cries of the news-sellers who constantly bawled, “Panic! Great panic in the City! Panic! List of banks closed!” He had heard as he changed at Barnet that fourteen houses in the City had shut their doors, but he had not appreciated the fact. Now he was to see with his own eyes shuttered windows and barred doors with great printed bills affixed to them, and huge crowds at gaze before them, groaning and hooting. Even the shops bore singular and striking witness to the crisis, for in Cheapside every other window exhibited a card stating that they would accept bank-notes to any extent and for goods to any amount—a courageous attempt to restore public confidence which deserved more success than it won; while there, and on all sides, he heard men execrating the Bank of England and loudly proclaiming—though this was not the fact—that it had published a notice that it could no longer pay cash. Here was panic indeed! Here was an appalling state of things! And very low his heart sank, as the chaise made a few yards, stopped, and advanced again. What chance had Ovington’s, what hope of survival had their little venture, when the very credit of the country tottered, and here in the heart of London age-long institutions with vast deposits and forty or fifty branches toppled down on all sides? When merchant princes with tens of thousands in sound but unsaleable securities could do nothing to save themselves, and men of world-wide fame, the giants of finance, went humbly, hat in hand, to ask for time? Stranded, or moving at a snail’s pace, he caught scraps of the talk about him. Smith’s in Mansion House Street had closed its doors. Everett and Walker’s had followed Pole’s into bankruptcy. Wentworth’s at York had failed for two hundred thousand pounds. Telford’s at Plymouth had been sacked by an angry mob. The strongest bank in Norwich was going or gone. The Bank of England had paid out eight millions in gold within the week—and had no more. They were paying in one-pound notes now, a set found God knows where—in the cellars, it was said. The tellers were so benumbed with terror that they could not separate them or count them.