CAUSES CÉLÈBRES.
XXII. FAUNTLEROY. [1824.] TN these degenerate days, when the crimes of forgery and embezzlement have be come almost epidemic, one may be excused for wondering if a return to the heroic treat ment for such offences practised by our forefathers might not be productive of bene ficial results. A cynical writer once obseived that we, in these later days, have materially gone back in civilization. We now only imprison bankers who turn thieves; formerly we used to hang them. Any day toward the close of the London season of 1824, persons turning into Berners Street out of the din and jostle of Oxford Street would have seen on the door of No. 6 an oblong brass plate, and engraved upon it, in free cursive letters, " Marsh, Stacey, Fauntleroy, & Graham," — names great on 'Change, potent in the bank par lor, and influential in Lombard Street. A rapid glance through the thin veil of a dark wire blind, bordered with white, would have shown well dressed, taciturn young men busy at ledgers, ruffling silvery bundles of bank-notes, or shovelling sovereigns in golden showers from drawer to counter, from counter to drawer. Had a glass door at the back of the room at that moment opened, it might have disclosed a thin-faced, elderly man, with neat powdered hair and a dress of black cut in the most perfect but quiet fashion. It might have been that the very moment the door opened that grave, in tensely respectable, and appreciated person, that delight of society, had just, with a sigh, completed the writing of a certain memo rable document and enclosed it in a tin box, sighing as he turned the key quickly and suspiciously in the lock, and then, carefully depositing it in a desk, locked the desk with
another key which hung among his costly bunch of watch-seals. Persons living in that street struggling in small businesses and just turning their money must have often looked up at the sumptuous apartments on the first floor at No. 6, and have envied that pale, grave man, whose anxious face they could some times see looking through the windows. Hackney-coachmen on the rank in Berners Street, as they screwed down the tobacco in their oily pipes and discussed the world over the tops of their coaches, must have often pointed with the butt end of their whips surreptitiously to the glittering windows at No. 6, when Mr. Fauntleroy was conspic uously " at home." "Rich as Croesus!" may have been said more than once on such occasions. Punctual as the Horse Guard's clock Mr. Fauntleroy came in from his Brighton villa, turned the corner from Regent Circus, and solemnly pushed open the bank doors, hush ing at once all chatter of clerks, their snatches of songs, and their theatrical and sporting reminiscences. To have impugned that house upon 'Change would have been to incur the penalty of be ing pumped on, and afterward of being beaten dry with a horsewhip; an action for libel with swinging damages would have then, without doubt, taken all the remainder of your breath out of you, and embittered the rest of your life with the disgrace of bankruptcy. The British Constitution was not more stable than Fauntleroy's house; Magna Charta not more venerated. • Yet, remarkable to state, on the afternoon of that bright and pleasant autumn-day, Septem ber ro, Samuel Plank, a hard-faced police-offi cer from Marlborough Street suddenly entered
