of the crest went a
pipe through which the air was to be admitted. The whole process was
exhibited on the Thames. Fine gentlemen and fine ladies were invited
to the show, were hospitably regaled, and were delighted by seeing the
divers in their panoply descend into the river and return laden with
old iron, and ship's tackle. There was a Greenland Fishing Company which
could not fail to drive the Dutch whalers and herring busses out of the
Northern Ocean. There was a Tanning Company which promised to furnish
leather superior to the best that was brought from Turkey or Russia.
There was a society which undertook the office of giving gentlemen a
liberal education on low terms, and which assumed the sounding name of
the Royal Academies Company. In a pompous advertisement it was announced
that the directors of the Royal Academies Company had engaged the best
masters in every branch of knowledge, and were about to issue twenty
thousand tickets at twenty shillings each. There was to be a lottery;
two thousand prizes were to be drawn; and the fortunate holders of the
prizes were to be taught, at the charge of the Company, Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, French, Spanish, conic sections, trigonometry, heraldry,
japanning, fortification, bookkeeping and the art of playing the
theorbo. Some of these companies took large mansions and printed their
advertisements in gilded letters. Others, less ostentatious, were
content with ink, and met at coffeehouses in the neighbourhood of the
Royal Exchange. Jonathan's and Garraway's were in a constant ferment
with brokers, buyers, sellers, meetings of directors, meetings
of proprietors. Time bargains soon came into fashion. Extensive
combinations were formed, and monstrous fables were circulated, for
the purpose of raising or depressing the price of shares. Our country
witnessed for the first time those phenomena with which a long
experience has made us familiar. A mania of which the symptoms were
essentially the same with those of the mania of 1720, of the mania of
1825, of the mania of 1845, seized the public mind. An impatience to
be rich, a contempt for those slow but sure gains which are the proper
reward of industry, patience and thrift, spread through society. The
spirit of the cogging dicers of Whitefriars took possession of the grave
Senators of the City, Wardens of Trades, Deputies, Aldermen. It was
much easier and much more lucrative to put forth a lying prospectus
announcing a new stock, to