the French police and imprisoned at Paris for six months. Impelled by some interest of which we do not know, he returned to London for forty-eight hours; and during those forty-eight hours he made the one small fatal mistake which put an end to his activities. He stayed in an hotel close to Covent Garden, but, startled by some disturbance in the street, he for a moment drew the blind aside and looked out. By one of those coincidences which are not so uncommon as the pedantic would have one to believe, there was a man passing in the street who knew him. The passer-by caught a glimpse of the face peeping out from behind the blind and cried aloud “That’s Wainwright, the bank forger.” He was tried on a charge of forgery, sentenced to transportation for life, and died miserably, years afterwards, in Sydney. CHAPTER VII. THE CORPORATION. An earlier chapter gave some account of the origin and beginnings of the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation. It would not be in keeping with this note on the occasion of the Bicentenary of the Corporation to enter into those details of profits, advantages and benefits, which are more suitable to a prospectus. But certain landmarks may well be noted. The year 1720 was, as we have seen, the difficult year in the history of the Corporation. It was the first year when the Corporation worked under its new Charter, and under its present name. It was the one year of all its two hundred in which for reasons which we have understood it paid no dividend upon its stock. Yet, during this one year of 1720, it gave such proofs of courage and vitality as must have inspired all intimately interested in its operations, with a very stout confidence; for although the threat of disaster was at the door, its Directors went blithely on their way, organising the extension of its business. In 1720 it absorbed the Sadler’s Hall Company, which with a nominal capital of two millions was unable to obtain a Charter under which it could do business. In 1721, the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation added to the Charter which it already possessed, another, granting it power to insure for life and against fire. In 1721, it appointed its first agent. Let us set down the actual date and record the name of the man, the fore-runner of so many thousands who were to carry on the torch, each in his turn, through the next two hundred years. On 22nd May, the Directors appointed Mr. Palmer, of Ockingham, in Berkshire, its agent. [Illustration: THE SECOND ROYAL EXCHANGE. Proof of First Heading on Fire Policies, 1721.] After that day the Corporation set to work very quickly to extend its agencies, for on the 31st of the same month it agreed to appoint “as many country postmasters as are proper to be country correspondents”; and by the next year, so widely had the system been increased, that it resolved, by a formal declaration, to undertake no responsibility in any town of America where it had not already an agent appointed.