d his welcome time,"
was wound up at last within the memory of living men. The stately
gate-way no longer opens upon the "grave court, with cloisters and
pillars," where South Sea stock so often changed hands. The cloisters
and pillars have gone; the court has been converted into a hall of a sort
of exchange, where merchants daily meet. The days of the desolation of
the South Sea House are as much a thing of its past as {187} its earlier
splendor. Its corridors are now crowded with offices occupied by
merchants of every nationality, from Scotland to Greece, and by companies
connected with every portion of the globe. Only at night, on Saturday
afternoons, and during the still peace of a City Sabbath, do the noise of
men and the stir of business cease in the South Sea House. Yet,
nevertheless, when one thinks of all that has happened there, of the
dreams and hopes and miseries of which it was the begetter, it remains
one of the most melancholy temples to folly that man has yet erected.

The South Sea Company had been established in 1710 by Harley himself, and
was going along quietly and soberly enough for the time; but the example
of the Mississippi Company was too strong for it. The South Sea Company,
too, made to itself waxen wings, and prepared to fly above the clouds.
The directors offered to relieve the State of its debt on condition of
obtaining a monopoly of the South Sea trade. The nation was to take
shares in the company in the first instance, and to deal with the
company, for its commercial and other wares, in the second; and by means
of the exclusive dealing in shares and in products it was to pay off the
National Debt. In other words, three men, all having nothing, and
heavily in debt, were to go into exclusive dealings with each other, and
were thus to make fortunes, discharge their liabilities, and live in
luxury for the rest of their days. Stated thus, the proposition looks
marvellously absurd. But it is not, in its essential conditions, more
absurd than many a financial project which floats successfully for a
time. Money-making, the hardest and most practical of all occupations,
the task which can soonest be tested by results, is the business of all
others in which men are most easily led astray, most greedy to be led
astray. Sydney Smith speaks of a certain French lady whose whole nature
cried out for her seduction. There are seasons when the whole nature of
man seems to cry out for his finan