Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/229

Rh houses, as honourable and as upright as ever were unfortunate. We should name them with regret were it not that the feeling of our duty is paramount to our ideas of delicacy; when men choose to make their concerns the subject of a newspaper squabble, or of argumentation in a court of law, they must not complain at being quoted in the evanescent publication now under hand. Their cases, and their names, must pass away with the occasion that gave them birth, to make room for other newer and better recognised instances of the overweening care usually bestowed upon that which is of small value: Nurses usually take the most care of sickly children.

From five to nine years ago was a tune of trial for the strongest mercantile houses in this country. The successes of the enemy, the burning decrees, the shutting up of one continent, and the warlike attitude of another, with its lucky hits at sea, promised fair to ruin the best prospects of the most firmly established merchants here, who looked to those points for the return of their capital, with its attendant profits.

Under these circumstances, we heard without surprise of the stoppages that were daily announced or hourly predicted; but we certainly