From Hogg's Instructor. THE BANK OF ENGLAND. THE bank is one of the grand points in the topography of London. Hackney coachmen, cabmen, and omnibusmen, regard it as amongst the chief ports in the voyage of the great city, and draw up here as a matter of course, to set down or take up their human freight. The bank is an immense building, situated a little to the west of Cornhill, and covering an area of several acres of ground. The business now transacted in this exten sive edifice was originally carried on in Grocers' Hall, in the Poultry-a building which now would scarcely be sufficient to accommodate one department of this vast establishment. In 1732, the foundation-stone of the present building was laid on the site of the house and garden of Sir John Honblon, the first governor; and the first erection only comprised what constitutes the present centre, with the courtyard, hall, and bullion court. In 1770, the eastern wing was added to the original; and in the five years ending 1804, the western wing, with the Lothbury front, were added. Since that period, there has been frequent additions and alterations made in the building to suit the convenience of the business departments, or to guard against certain contingencies. During the alarm of 1848, caused by the incoherent threats of several violent politicians in London, a parapet wall was raised all round, above the cornice, and other means were adopted to facilitate defence should an attack have been attempted. The principal entrance is from Threadneedle Street-the front having a centre eighty feet long, besides wings. The view of the bank, as a whole, is not imposing; it is isolated in its position, and in this respect is more favored than many of the splendid edifices of London; nevertheless, the diversity of plans upon which its parts have been built, has denied it that architectural integrity which seldom belongs to any edifice not the idea of one mind. The front is composed of pillars, &c., of the Ionic order, on a rustic base; and the wings are ornamented with a colonnade. The back of the bank is in Lothbury, from which a handsome carriage-entrance leads into the outer, and then into the bullion courts. The Bank of England, although ostensibly a public establishment, and though it does present free access to several of its places of business, is, nevertheless, carefully guarded against general intrusion; and it requires considerable interest to obtain a view of the more private apartments of this truly wonderful and most interesting establishment. We were fortunate enough to have a kind and influential friend, who procured for us an order of admission from a director, and with this carte, which opened the way to the treasures of the greatest commercial country in the world, we presented ourselves at the bank. We were politely led to a little waiting-room by a man dressed in black pants and red vest, and wearing a browny drab coat, with a silver elliptical medal attached to his left breast, bearing the words round its edge of "Bank of England." This person took our admission-card from us, and left us alone for some minutes. At last, another official, similarly attired, presented himself, and, bowing, begged to be permitted to conduct us over the premises. Before we could be permitted to advance into the domains of England's Plutus, the admissioncard had to be scrutinized, then initialed on the back by a clerk. The name of the registered visitor, and the number of the party accompanying him, were required to be entered in a journal, with the name of the guide who was to lead us over the various departments; the card was then countersigned by a cashier, and we were at last admissible. Every department of manual labor connected with the business of the bank, save paper-making, is carried on within its walls, as well as the more immediate business of a money-lending, money-changing establishment; and the precision, order, and regularity which pervade the whole mechanical departments, are wonderful illustrations of method and mechanical contriThe first room we entered was a vance. comparatively small one, and lighted, like | are made of smooth slabs of purple-colored all the other apartments, from above. Before us, and to our left, were piles of roughedged, thick, day-book and ledger paper, which ten persons, men, women, and boys, were employed in ruling, cutting, folding, and stitching. The ruling was rapidly performed by a woman and two boys, the process being most ingenious and effective. The pens, or points, which conduct the ink to the paper, are made from thin sheets of brass -several points, divided according to the pattern required, being in one sheet. Those brass-pointed ink-conductors are attached to a wooden cylinder which remains stationary, and alongst which, above the pens, is stretched a piece of flannel. This flannel is saturated with coloring matter, and as the sheet of paper to be ruled passes through two rollers, a part of it is always presented to the points, which, attracting the ink from the flannel, deposits it on the large folios, ruling a whole sheet at once. A beautiful cutting-machine takes the rough edges from those folios after they are folded. The action of this machine, which is perpendicular, is regulated by a gage, which moves the cutter backward and forward according to the will of the person superintending the work. The shavings from the paper are carefully preserved, and sent off to the paper-mill to be returned in folios. The women who stitch the reference and other books previous to binding, sit up in a high gallery, overlooking the ruling and cutting apartment. From this room we passed into the letterpress printing office, where three steam cylindrical presses and two hand-presses occupied the floor. The machines were splendid ones, from the manufactory of E. & E. Cowper, London and Manchester. Eight persons were at work here, setting up and throwing off, in order to supply the daily consumpt of sixty folio volumes, &c., which are required for this great house of business. In passing from the letter-press room we entered a long narrow saloon, in which light shafts and wheels were revolving, and causing to move all the beautiful machinery in operation throughout the whole extent of the building. In this saloon was seated a person, whose sole duty it was to fold stamped letters; and, to judge by the activity of his motions, he had a good man's work of it. On the same floor with this shaft-room is the mechanical work-room, in which a planing machine was putting a smooth face upon a brass plate, and several workmen were busy filing and fitting. Ascending the stairs, which slate, we next found ourselves in a recessed stroke of each press, and consequently the number of notes printed by every two men. When a hundred notes have been thrown off by a workman, they are placed in a box, and inserted into a slit above the indicator of his particular press. These are immediately taken away, as if by magic, and a hundred blank sheets of paper appear in their stead. It is impossible to peculate even a sheet of this paper without immediate detection-such is the intelligent supervision maintained by the wonderful steam-engine and the mechanical contrivances pertaining to it. Twenty-eight thousand bank-notes are generally thrown off hered aily. The printing-presses are kept in motion by broad woolen belts, which of course become soiled, and are changed every day. These are washed and dried in a little room fitted up for the purpose, and so expeditious is the whole process, that those heavy woolen cloths, several yards in length, can be cleansed and dried in three quarters of an hour. Adjacent to the washing-room is the room in which the paper is saturated with water before being sent to the printers. The paper is remarkably thin, and so porous that two hundred five-pound note sheets will absorb about an English pint of water. As soon as the water has been forced by a hydraulic machine through all the body of the note-paper, it is then taken to be pressed. This is an extremely nice and delicate process, for if the pressure administered was to exceed the necessary amount, the thin sheets of paper would probably become coherent into a solid mass. The pressure allowed is three tons, but the process is gradual and frequent. The water pressed from the paper runs off by a pipe into a reservoir, and the room in which those machines work is perfectly dry and comfortable. In this same room a grinding-machine is constantly preparing ink for the printers. This ink, or Frankfort black, is made from the calcined lees and seeds of grapes, and forms one of the finest and darkest imprints that can be found. Twenty-eight pounds weight of this compost are used by the printers in the bank daily. All the machines, which we have endeavored to describe in a general manner, are wrought by a steam-engine of ten horse power, which, down in its snug little room, keeps up its constant clatter and motion, revising, optimizing, and accelerating the labors of man, without requiring man's revision. This engine regulates the supply of coal in the furnace, causes the fire to revolve which consumes its own smoke, and governs all the subordinate and superior motions connected with itself, except filling the hoppers over the furnaces with coal, as if it was possessed of a rational intelligence. The fires are lighted, and the hoppers filled with coal-dust every morning, and then the engine is left to do its own business, until its services are dispensed with in the evening. Passing from the engine-house, we winded through a little narrow passage, and found ourselves in a spacious yard, the centre of which was occupied by a great iron cage about twenty feet in diameter, having a roof terminating in a point, and surrounding and covering a brick furnace, full of the black ashes of what had once represented the wealth of this vast industrial community. This is the furnace in which the old banknotes are annually consumed. Our guide informed us that six men are employed during two entire days in destroying the old notes of a year's issue. A Bank of England note is never reissued after it returns to the bank. It is then canceled and destroyed, to make way for the new issue. A slight description of the mode of conducting business in regard to the issue of bank-notes will enable our readers to see with what ease the circulation of forged notes can be immediately detected, and the number and amount of all those in circulation declared. On every note there is the date of its issue, the sum of its value, the name of one cashier, and the initial letters which indicate the reference-book in which all those particulars are carefully registered. Whenever a note is presented to the bank the corner is torn from it, the number is punched out, it is canceled in the registerbook, and then sent down to the library, there to lie for ten years, until burned in the yard during the eleventh. By this means the bank can tell, by reference to its books, how many notes of any date, since the year 1694, are in circulation, and to what amount. The old notes are kept for ten years in the library, and on the eleventh they are destroyed, so that there is a conflagration annually. Some of the bills in the library were once the representatives of immense wealth. One thousand pound notes are, however, the largest in amount that are circulated by the bank. We had a package of five hundred of these in our hands. We had also five or six bills, amounting in the aggregate to four millions and a half of money, one of them alone being for one million sterling. We now ascended from the subterranean library into the accountant's office, and the transition was very striking. The latter is a magnificent hall, seated all through with desks, at which about a hundred clerks were busy turning over the leaves of books, and making entries, or comparing notes and preparing them for the archives below. Sixteen Ionic columns run in two parallel rows along the sides of this vast hall. At the one end there is a great clock, at the other is a recess, in which are seated the senior or head ac countants. In the issue-room there is a fine marble statue of William III., which seems to preside over twenty-eight money-changers, who are constantly employed taking or giving gold and silver for Bank of England notes, or vice versa. The desks of the clerks surround this spacious apartment, and offer every facility for the active business carried on here. In the cashier's room we counted eleven white-haired gentlemen busily signing and countersigning the notes to be issued. One of the most interesting and astonish- The banking department is now carriedon ing departments within the whole compass in a temporary wooden erection, in conseof the banking business was the weighing quence of some necessary alterations being department, in which, with the rapidity of made in the usual place of business. Two thought, and a precision approaching to the beautiful elms are growing up through the hundredth part of a grain, the weight of the roof and centre of this banking house, the gold coins are determined. There are six leaves on those branches enclosed being seer weighing machines, kept working by the and withered, while those that have been alsame agency which supplies all the mechani-lowed to breathe even the deleterious air of cal power in the bank, and three weighers London are bright and green. Eighty clerks attend to these. Rolls of sovereigns, or half- were huddled in here, and yet the duties of sovereigns, are placed in grooves, and are their office seemed to be discharged with reshaken, one at a time, by the motion of the markable ability and ease. All the desks machine, into the weights. If they are of were distinguished by particular letters of standard weight they are thrown by the same the alphabet, which referred the person doing mechanical intelligence into a box at the business with one clerk to the individual necesright-hand side of the person who watches the sary to complete it, without noise or confusion. operation; if they have lost the hundredth part of a grain they are cast into a box on the left. Those which stand the test are put into bags of one thousand sovereigns each, and those below par are cut by a machine, and sent back to the mint. Between one and two thousand light sovereigns are thus daily sent out of circulation. The silver is put up into bags each of one hundred pounds value, and the gold into bags of a thousand, and then those bagfuls of bullion are sent through a strongly-guarded door, or rather window, into the treasury. The treasury is a dark, gloomy apartment, fitted up with iron presses, which are supplied with huge locks and bolts, and which are perfectly fire-proof. Gold, silver, and paper money ready for circulation, to the amount of twenty-two millions sterling, were in the treasury when we visited it. One of the gentlemen in that department placed one thousand sovereigns in our hand, and at the same time pointed to seventy bags full of gold in the little recess which he had thrown open, making in all the modest sum of seventy thousand pounds. He placed notes to the amount of half a million also upon our palm, which no doubt had its own sensations as the precious deposit trembled on its top. The heads of departments meet in the treasury every evening, and there all the accounts are balanced. The The most splendid of all the halls in the Bank of England, however, is the Rotunda, in which all the stockjobbers, stockbrokers, and others, meet for the purpose of transacting business in the public funds, and in which the government dividends are paid. From the floor to the apex of the dome is eightytwo feet, and the stucco work is very beautiful. Fourteen upright cariatides-female figures-stand upon a circular pediment and support the lofty dome, through which falls the softened, chastened sunbeams. cupola which caps the summit of the dividend warrant office is very rich in alto-relievos, and is also supported by twenty statues, standing two and two by each other's sides. The transfer office is that in which all transactions in the stocks are settled, after parties have agreed to a transmission. He who sells out cancels his claims upon the government, transferring them to the person who may have purchased from him. The consolidated annuity office is appropriated to the sale of annuities, and to the granting of the receipts required by the annuitants before they draw their money. All the transactions of this office are preserved in the presses, the doors of which are numbered and lettered, and indicate the particular entry-books within that have been used since the incorporation of the bank by royal charter in 1694. Nine families constantly reside within the precincts of the bank-the houses of the secretary, chief accountant, and gate-keeper being situated round the court, into which the Lothbury gate opens. Round the whole extent of the bank, within the parapet-wall, there is a walk, upon which the sentinels pace during the night, lest thieves should attempt to enter. Thirty-four private soldiers and an officer are deputed to this duty every night, each man receiving a shilling, and the officer half-a-crown, and his supper. Besides these soldiers, and the families resident in the bank, there are fourteen men constantly there, day and night, who are perfectly acquainted with all the labyrinthian mazes of the vast building, and who could immediately bring the fire-engines into operation, which stand in the furnace-court. There are about one thousand individuals employed in this establishment. In 1819, there were eleven hundred clerks employed, and twenty-five years previous to that period two hundred and fifty sufficed to discharge the duties required. The Bank of England was projected by William Paterson, a Scotchman, the original capital being one million two hundred thousand pounds. Since it was incorporated the capital has increased to tens of millions. The bank corporation are prohibited from trading in any article of commerce whatever, and are to confine their business to the buying and selling of gold and silver bullion, the discounting of bills, and the power of selling whatever goods are pledged to them three months after the date specified for their redemption. The profits of the bank arise from the traffic in bullion and bills, and from the management of the public funds, which is deputed to them by government. The business hours are from nine to five o'clock, and the most rigid exactitude in time-keeping is demanded from all the employees. If an individual is three times late in his attendance, he is called before the directors and reprimanded; if the fault is again repeated, the delinquent receives a gentle intimation to resign his situation. Fifty or more of those employed in this vast national counting-house are constantly enjoying holiday, the period of relaxation extending as the period during which a man has served extends. The direction of the bank is vested in a governor, deputy-governor, and twenty-four directors, who are elected annually at a general court of the proprietors. Thirteen directors, with the governor, form a court for the management of business. ADIEU TO SORROW. COME, let us depart from our sorrow, Our ancestors lov'd to be merry, Nor pined at the darkness of fate; They chatted and laughed in their glory, By chanting some comical story |