and adorned with two excellent portraits of
two ancient cashiers; regarding one of whom
the public were warned:—

      "Sham Abraham you may,
      I've often heard say:
  But you mustn't sham 'Abraham Newland.'''

There are several conference-rooms for
gentlemen who require a little private
conversation with the Old Lady—perhaps on the
subject of discounts.

It is no light thing to send in one's card to
the Foster-Mother of British commerce; the
Soul of the State; "the Sun," according to
Sir Francis Baring, around which the
agriculture, trade, and finance of this country
revolves; the mighty heart of active capital,
through whose arteries and veins flows the
entire circulating medium of this great country.
It was not, therefore, without agitation that
we were ushered from the waiting-room, into
that celebrated private apartment of the Old
Lady of Threadneedle Street—the Parlour—
the Bank Parlour, the inmost mystery—the
cella of the great Temple of Riches.

The ordinary associations called up by the
notion of an old lady's comfortable parlour,
were not fulfilled by this visit. There is no
domestic snugness, no easy chair, no cat, no
parrot, no japanned bellows, no portrait of
the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold
in the Royal Box at Drury Lane Theatre;
no kettle-holder, no worsted rug for the urn,
no brass footman for the buttered toast, in the
parlour in Threadneedle Street. On the
contrary, the room is extensive—supported by
pillars; is of grand and true proportions;
and embellished with architectural ornaments
in the best taste. It has a long table for the
confidential managers of the Old Lady's affairs
(she calls these gentlemen her Directors) to
sit at; and usually, a side table fittingly
supplied with a ready-laid lunch.

The Old Lady's "Drawing" Room is as
unlike—but then she is such a peculiar Old Lady!
—any ordinary Drawing-room as need be.
It has hardly any furniture, but desks, stools,
and books. It is of immense proportions,
and has no carpet. The vast amount of
visitors the Old Lady receives between nine
and four every day, would make lattice-work
in one forenoon of the stoutest carpet ever
manufactured. Everybody who comes into
the Old Lady's Drawing-room delivers his
credentials to her gentlemen-ushers, who are
quick in examining the same, and exact in
the observance of all points of form. So
highly-prized, however, is a presentation (on
any grand scale) to the Old Lady's Drawing-room,
not withstanding its plainness, that there
is no instance of a Drawing-room at Court
being more sought after. Indeed, it has
become a kind of proverb that the way to Court
often lies through the Old Lady's apartments,
and some suppose that the Court Sticks are
of gold and silver in compliment to her.

As to the individual appearance of the Old
Lady herself, we are authorised to state that
the portrait of a Lady (accompanied by eleven
balls on a sprig, and a beehive) which appears
in the upper left-hand corner of all the Bank
of England Notes, is NOT the portrait of the
Lady. She invariably wears a cap of silver
paper, with her yellow hair gathered carefully
underneath. When she carries any defensive
or offensive weapon, it is not a lance, but a
pen; and her modesty would on no account
permit her to appear in such loose drapery as
is worn by the party in question—who we
understand is depicted as a warning to the
youthful merchants of this country to avoid
the fate of George Barnwell.

In truth, like the Delphian mystery, SHE of
Threadneedle Street is invisible, and delivers
her oracles through her high priests: and, as
Herodotus got his information from the priests
in Egypt, so did we learn all we know
about the Bank from the great officers of
the Myth of Threadneedle Street. All of
them are remarkable for great intelligence and
good humour, particularly one MR. MATTHEW
MARSHALL; for whom the Old Lady is
supposed to have a sneaking kindness, as she
is continually promising to pay him the most
stupendous amounts of money. From what
these gentlemen told us, we are prepared
unhesitatingly to affirm in the teeth of the
assertions of Plutarch, and Pliny, and Justin,
that although Crœsus might have been well
enough to do in the world in his day, he was
but a pettifogger compared with the Great
Lady of St. Christopher le Stocks. The
Lydian king never employed nine hundred
clerks, or accommodated eight hundred of
them under one roof; and if he could have
done either, he would have been utterly
unable to muster one hundred and thirty
thousand pounds a year to pay them. He never
had bullion in his cellars, at any one time,
to the value of sixteen millions and a half
sterling, as our Old Lady has lately averaged;
nor "other securities"—much more marketable
than the precious stones Crœsus showed
to Solon—to the amount of thirty millions.
Besides, all his capital was "dead weight;"
that in Threadneedle Street is active, and is
represented by an average paper currency of
twenty millions per annum.

After this statement of facts, we trust that
modern poets when they want a hyperbole for
wealth will cease to cite Crœsus, and draw
their future inspirations from the shrine and
cellars of the Temple opposite the Auction
Mart; or, as the late Mr. George Robins
designated it when professionally occupied, "The
Great House over the way."

When we withdrew from the inmost fane of
this Temple, we were ushered by the priest,
who superintends the manufacture of the
mysterious Deity's oracles, into those recesses
of her Temple in which these are made. Here
we perceived, that, besides carrying on the
ordinary operations of banking, the Old Lady
is an extensive printer, engraver, book-binder,
and publisher. She maintains a