London had spread out consequently through Lincoln’s Inn Fields to Bloomsbury and Soho; Pall Mall was laid out in great mansions; nobles moved westwards, and a new city of shops, clubs and coffee houses grew up in the neighbourhood of their new homes. The factor of numbers had thus become a cause of that gulf between the gentry and the “cit,” which the next hundred years was more and more to widen. The great wars of the 18th century dug the trench deeper. Soldiering became an ill-paid occupation demanding the monopoly of a man’s life. The sons of the nobles became the officers of Marlborough, and later on of Wellington; they were transformed into a class apart; they lost their touch with the business side of London; they even became a trifle contemptuous. How great the change was from the days when Sir Thomas Gresham entertained Queen Elizabeth in Austin Friars any man may see by such diaries as time has handed down to us. There remain two, still kept by the descendants of Edward Forster, for many years a Governor of the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation. Mr. Forster was a commercial magnate in the grand style. He was at one time head of three great City Corporations: The Royal Exchange Assurance; the Russia Company; the Mercers’ Company; and he added to these duties that of Deputy-Governor to the London Docks. In a word, he was the very type of citizen, who two hundred years before would have been hand in glove with the great statesmen of the Realm. The diaries give us a picture of a gentleman living quietly at Walthamstow--a man with a love of nature and a taste for art, and possessed of a queer gift for painting landscapes with reeds. We read of him being robbed of his purse by a footpad on his way to the City. We read of certain simple treats to his children: “We all went to London,” writes one of them, “and after with Papa in a coach to Drury Lane Playhouse, getting in at half price with the 4th Act”--Oh! frugal Papa! But perhaps it was just as well, for the play was “Measure for Measure,” and hardly suitable for young Benjamin and Thomas. On this occasion, the family saw Mrs. Siddons in the part of Isabella. At another time, “Mama, Aunt Sukey, Miss Ward and I went to the Royal Exchange Assurance in a coach. But Pa and Ned were there; uncle came afterwards. We went into the room which looks into Cornhill, with a balcony.” This was in October of 1783, and the family went to the Royal Exchange to see and hear peace proclaimed with France and Spain. “The Heralds proclaimed it betwixt 1 and 2 o’clock. There was a long procession of horse soldiers--some men with hatchets on horseback, some with trumpets, which they sounded. Afterwards came the Lord Mayor in his coach.” Without a doubt, the period during which the second Royal Exchange stood was one during which the City merchants lost much of their high position, and probably something of their broad outlook upon the world. They became concentrated upon their immediate affairs. They