The City Companies were an autocracy, but, given the conditions of the time, they were a benevolent autocracy, and the guilds laid the foundations of the vast commercial wealth which has made London what she is. For centuries the Lord Mayor, their civic head, has been chosen almost always from amongst the members of the twelve great companies, and enjoys a prestige abroad only second to that of the king, as anyone who has lived in France can testify. Trade in England has always been honourable. The merchants of the Middle Ages belonged almost exclusively to families of good position; often they were younger sons of the landed gentry, for whom a commercial life, in days when there were no engineers, journalists, or bankers, was the usual opening if they did not go into the Church or Law. Whittington was the son of a Gloucestershire knight: Sir Thomas Gresham, that finest type of City magnate and honoured friend of Elizabeth, came of a good old stock and was educated at Cambridge. For centuries our kings and queens have been pleased to come to banquets in the Guildhall and the halls of the greater companies, though they might not nowadays look favourably upon that lord mayor with whom Charles II. dined, who became so drunk that when the king got up to leave he rushed after him and dragged him back, good-naturedly protesting, “to finish t’other bottle.” The old power of the guilds has gone, but in what other country would you find bodies of merchants, each with a vast revenue at its disposal of which it need give account to no man, using that wealth, generation after generation, [Illustration: GUILDHALL] for the public good instead of for private profit? They spend it either in maintaining excellent schools or in generous gifts to various charitable objects, or in subscriptions for the advancement of science (the City Companies are responsible for the City and Guilds Institute), but in whatever they do they uphold the best traditions of integrity and generosity of the City merchant. The centre of all this civic activity is the Guildhall. From Oxford Circus a tube to the Bank or any bus along Holborn takes you along Cheapside and past King Street, at the end of which you see the Guildhall. If you start from the neighbourhood of Charing Cross any train to the Mansion House brings you to Queen Victoria Street, out of which Queen Street, a few minutes’ walk to your right, leads through directly to King Street.