repeated it on Oct. 11, from
the Red House, Battersea (where now is Battersea Park), to Vauxhall.

On 8 Oct. Louis Philippe, the King of the French, landed at Portsmouth on
a visit to the Queen. He was made a Knight of the Garter, and generally
feted, and should have returned to France, from Portsmouth on the 12th,
but the sea was too rough, and he had to cross from Dover, instead; but
even this trip was delayed by a great conflagration at New Cross Station,
so that he really did not depart until the 13th.

I meet with the first mention of that eminent fertiliser, Guano, in a
commercial point of view, in the _Times_ of the 18 Oct., where it says
that on 16th were put up for sale, at Liverpool, in lots of 10 tons each,
180 tons of the best African guano. But one lot of five tons was sold,
and that fetched 5 pounds 12s. 6d. The next lot was not sold, in
consequence of the price offered being under that, and the whole of the
remaining lots were withdrawn, there being no probability of the reserved
price being realised. It was then being fetched from Ichaboe, an island
off the south-west coast of Africa--but it was afterwards procured in
large quantities from the Chincha Islands, off the coast of Peru.

On 28 Oct. the Queen opened the New Royal Exchange, with great State, and
the Lord Mayor (W. Magnay, Esq.) was made a baronet; the reading-room at
Lloyd's was made into a Throne room for the occasion, and a sumptuous
_dejeuner_ was served in the Underwriters' room. It was a very imposing
pageant and pretty sight; but, although the Exchange was formally opened,
no merchants assembled within its quadrangle until the first of the
following January.

Whilst on matters civic I must mention the very rare fact of Sir William
Magnay's successor in the office of Lord Mayor (Mr. Alderman Gibbs),
being hooted and yelled at, on 9 Nov., whilst going to Westminster, and
returning thence. He had been churchwarden of St. Stephen's, Walbrook,
and the popular mind was imbued with the idea that something was wrong
with his accounts, so they virtuously insulted him. He had a hard enough
time of it both by land and water, when going, what his returning was, is
best told by a contemporary:

"The ceremony within the Court of Exchequer having terminated, similar
uproarious shouts to those which had hailed the arrival of the new Lord
Mayor, now marked his embarcation for the city; and, in his passage down
the Thames, with but here and the