lade in the arms being a
piece of mulberry tree, planted by Peter the Great when he worked as a
shipwright in Deptford Dockyard. The place is worth coming to
see--country cousins ought to look at it; the entrance vestibule, Mr.
Timbs, in his "Curiosities of London," informs us, is richly embellished
with vases of fruit, arabesque foliage, terminal figures, &c. In the
rotunda, between the Raphaelesque scroll-supports, are panels painted
with impersonations of the coal-bearing rivers of England--the Thames,
Mersey, Severn, Trent, Humber, Aire, Tyne, &c.: and above them, within
flower borders, are figures of Wisdom, Fortitude, Vigilance, Temperance,
Perseverance, Watchfulness, Justice, and Faith. The arabesques in the
first story are views of coal mines--Wallsend, Percy, Pit Main, Regent's
Pit, &c. The second and third storey panels are painted with miners at
work; and the twenty-four ovals at the springing of the dome have, upon a
turquoise blue ground, figures of fossil plants found in coal formations.
The minor ornamentation is flowers, shells, snakes, lizards, and other
reptiles, miners' tools and nautical subjects;--there you can see all the
process of coal mining, without troubling yourself to go down a mine, and
in a small museum, too small for such a grand building and such a wealthy
trade, curious specimens of fossil products and coal will make the
observer still more learned; but let us look at the living mass beneath.
Some of the men below are famous city names. There sometimes you may see
Sir James Duke, who came to London a clerk, poor and under-paid, on board
a man-of-war, and who on this Coal Exchange has made a colossal fortune,
and who was made a baronet, he being at the time Lord Mayor, when the New
Exchange was opened by Prince Albert, on the 29th Oct., 1849, accompanied
by the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal. Here oftener you may see
Hugh Taylor, M.P., who began life as a cabin-boy, then became a captain,
then was developed into a coal-owner, and who is said to be a perfect
Midas, and possesses an art, very much, thought of by city people, of
turning everything he touches into gold. On a door just below where we
stand is inscribed the name of Lord Ward, for even noblemen don't mind
sullying their fingers with vulgar trade, if anything is to be made by
it. And there is the name of a Welsh coal-owner, who, some fifty years
back, was a clerk in a certain timber merchant's, at a guinea a week, a