It may be asked, as Lloyd’s will now have nothing to do with such a rotten tub, How does the owner get anyone to insure it? It is generally done by mutual insurance clubs formed among these very owners, though not exclusively. Plimsoll says: “It almost seems as if there was a race who should lose his ships first on the formation of a new club, so great are the sums the members are called upon to pay as premium;” and such clubs are constantly failing. To be classed A 1 in anything is good, and, as applied to a ship at Lloyd’s, means, as we all know, that the vessel is first-class in every particular. But what is Lloyd’s? Many readers would find it difficult to give a clear answer to this query. The secretary of that institution told M. Esquiros, when that distinguished writer was visiting England, that he received many business letters addressed to “Mr. Lloyd,” and we all know there was long, in fact, a celebrated Lloyd’s Coffee-house in the City, where the merchants interested in maritime matters used to congregate. A poem, “The Wealthy Shopkeeper, or Charitable Christian,” published in 1700, alludes to the establishment, and the writer adds, as an addendum, that the London merchant at that time never missed “resorting to Lloyd’s to read his letters and attend sales.” Later, Steele and Addison both spoke of it in the same light. “The veritable, personal Lloyd,” says Esquiros, “as we see, has made a great deal more noise in the world after his death than he ever did during his lifetime.” The name of the coffee-house keeper has become inseparably connected with the greatest maritime institution of the world.