This Alderman Waithman was almost one of the typical class so often held up as an example for all poor boys to follow, _i.e._, he began life with simply his own energy, and opportunity to help him. And, as a virtuous example of industry, when the times were not so pushing as now; and half, and quarter, or less commissions on transactions were unknown, we may just spend a minute in reading about him. Wrexham was his birthplace in 1764, and his father dying soon after, he was adopted by his uncle and sent to school. No one was then left very many years in _statu pupillari_, and, consequently, he had to join his uncle in business, as a linendraper at Bath. The uncle died in 1788, and he took a place at Reading, whence he came to London, and lived as a linendraper's assistant until he came of age. He then married, and opened a shop at the South end of the Fleet Market, nearly precisely on the spot where his monument now stands. He prospered in business, and moved to other, and larger premises, became Common Councilman, tried to get into Parliament for the City, and ultimately succeeded in 1818. Next election he lost it, but in all subsequent ones he was the favoured candidate. He was Alderman of Farringdon Without, Sheriff, and filled the office of Mayor in 1823-4. The obelisk to his memory remains, but he has dropped out of general memory, and this revival of his life, for imitation, in industry and rectitude of conduct, must be my excuse for taking up my readers' time. Far different is it with John Wilkes, about whom every one knows, and I have only to say that his obelisk bears the inscription-- A.D. M.D.C.C.LXXV. THE RIGHT HONORABLE JOHN WILKES, Lord Mayor. This inscription became effaced through the weather, and was, within the last few years, replaced with a new stone; but it was grumbled at for not having the original word "Esquire" after John Wilkes, which was surely a work of supererogation. Close by was Ludgate, with its debtors' prison of Lud-gate, which was rather aristocratic, being "purely for Insolvent Citizens of _London_, Beneficed Clergy, and Attorneys at Law," and which was even peculiar in the time when it existed; for Maitland, in his "History of London" (ed. 1775, pp. 28, 29) says:-- "The domestick Government of this Prison having something very singular and remarkable in it, I presume an Account thereof will not be unacceptable to the Reader. I shall, therefore, insert a compendious Abstract thereof from an Account published some Time ago by one who had been a long Time Prisoner there.