It may be said that there are many cases on record in which men of quite humble origin have advanced themselves in trade, even to becoming Lord Mayor of London.  Could not a poor lad do in the nineteenth century what Whittington did in the fourteenth?  Could he not tie up his belongings in a handkerchief and make for London, where the streets were paved with gold, and the walls were built of jasper?  Well, you see, in this matter of the poor lad and his elevation to giddy heights there has been a little mistake, principally due to the chap-books.  The poor lad who worked his way upward in the nineteenth century belonged to the bourgeoise, not the craftsman class.  While his schoolfellows remained clerks, he, by some early good fortune—­by marriage, by cousinship, was enabled to get his foot on the ladder, up which he proceeded to climb with strength and resolution.  The poor lad who got on in earlier times was the son of a country gentleman.  Dick Whittington was the son of Sir William Whittington, Knight and afterwards outlaw.  He was apprenticed to his cousin, Sir John Fitzwarren, Mercer and merchant-adventurer, son of Sir William Fitzwarren, Knight.  Again, Chichele, Lord Mayor, and his younger brother, Sheriff, and his elder brother, Archbishop of Canterbury, were sons of one Chichele, Gentleman and Armiger of Higham Ferrers in the county of Northampton.  Sir Thomas Gresham was the son of Sir Richard Gresham, nephew of Sir John Gresham, and younger brother of Sir John Gresham, also of a good old country family.  In fact, we may look in vain through the annals of London city for the rise of the humble boy from the ranks of the craftsmen.  Once or twice, perhaps, one may find such a case.  If we consider the early years of the nineteenth century, when the long wars attracted to the army all the younger sons, it does seem as if the Mayors and Aldermen must have come from very humble beginnings.  Even then, however, we find on investigation that the city fathers of that time had mostly sprung from small shops.  They were never, to begin with, craftsmen, and at the end of the century any such rise was never dreamed of by the most ambitious.  The clerk, if a lad became a clerk, remained a clerk:  he had no hope of becoming anything else.  The shopman remained a shopman, his only hope being the establishment of himself as a master if he could save enough money.  The craftsman remained a craftsman.  And for partnerships there were always plenty—­younger sons and others—­eager to buy themselves in, or there were sons and nephews waiting their turn.  No son of a working man, or a clerk, could hope for any other advancement in the City than advancement to higher salary for long and faithful service.