steam-engine to drive letter-press and
copper-plate printing machines, besides the other
machinery which is employed in various
operations, from making thousand pound notes
to weighing single sovereigns. It is not until
you see three steam-printing machines—such
as we use for this publication—and hear that
they are constantly revolving, to produce, at
so many thousand sheets per hour, the printed
forms necessary for the accurate account-
keeping of this great Central Establishment
and its twelve provincial branches, that you
are fully impressed with the magnitude of the
Old Lady's transactions. In this one department
no fewer than three hundred account-
books are printed, ruled, bound, and used
every week. During that short time they
are filled with MS. by the eight hundred
subordinates and their chiefs. By way of
contrast we saw the single ledger which sufficed
to post up the daily transactions of the Old
Lady on her first establishment in business.
It is no bigger than that of a small tradesman's,
and served to contain a record of the year's
accounts. Until within the last few years,
visitors to the Bullion Office were shown the
old box into which the books of the Bank were
put every night for safety during the Old
Lady's early career. This receptacle is no
bigger than a seaman's chest. A spacious
fire-proof room is now nightly filled with each day's
accounts, and they descend to it by means of a
great hydraulic trap in the Drawing Office;
the mountain of calculation when collected
being too huge to be moved by human agency.

These works are, of course, only produced
for private reference; but the Old Lady's
publishing business is as extensive as it is profitable
and peculiar. Although her works are the
reverse of heavy or erudite—being "flimsy"
to a proverb—yet the eagerness with which
they are sought by the public, surpasses that
displayed for the productions of the greatest
geniuses who ever enlightened the world: she
is, therefore, called upon to print enormous
numbers of each edition,—generally one
hundred thousand copies; and reprints of equally
large impressions are demanded, six or seven
times a year. She is protected by a stringent
copyright; in virtue of which, piracy is felony,
and was, until 1831, punished with death.
The very paper is copyright, and to imitate
even that entails transportation. Indeed its
merits entitle it to every protection, for it
is a very superior article. It is so thin that
each sheet, before it is sized, weighs only
eighteen grains; and so strong, that, when
sized and doubled, a single sheet is capable of
suspending a weight of fifty-six pounds.

The literature of these popular prints is
concise to terseness. A certain individual,
duly accredited by the Old Lady, whose
autograph appears in one corner, promises to pay to
the before-mentioned Mr. Matthew Marshall,
or bearer on demand, a certain sum, for the
Governor and Company of the Bank of England.
There is a date and a number; for the
Old Lady's sheets are published in Numbers;
but, unlike other periodicals, no two copies of
her's are alike. Each has a set of numerals,
shown on no other.—It must not be supposed
from the utter absence of rhetoric in this
Great Woman's literature, that it is devoid of
ornament. On the contrary, it is illustrated
by eminent artists: the illustrations consisting
of the waves of a watermark made in the
paper; a large black blot, with the statement
in white letters of the sum which is promised
to be paid; and the portrait referred to in a
former part of this account of the Wonderful
Old Lady.

She makes it a practice to print thirty thousand
copies of these works daily. Everything
possible is done by machinery,—engraving,
printing, numbering; but we refrain from
entering into further details of this portion
of the Old Lady's Household here, as we are
preparing a review of her valuable works,
which shall shortly appear, in the form of a
History of a Bank-note. The publication
department is so admirably conducted, that a
record of each individual piece of paper
launched on the ocean of public favour is
kept, and its history traced till its return; for
another peculiarity of the Old Lady's
establishment is, that every impression put forth
comes back—with few exceptions—in process
of time to her shelves; where it is kept for ten
years, and then burnt. This great house is,
therefore, a huge circulating library. The
daily average number of notes brought back
into the Old Lady's lap—examined to detect
forgeries; defaced; entered upon the record
made when they were issued; and so stored
away that they can be reproduced at any
given half-hour for ten years to come,—is
twenty-five thousands. On the day of our
visit, there came in twenty-eight thousand
and seventy-four of her picturesque pieces of
paper, representing one million, one thousand,
two hundred and seventy pounds sterling,
to be dealt with as above, preparatory to their
decennial slumber on her library shelves.

The apartment in which the notes are kept
previous to issue, is the Old Lady's Store-
room. There is no jam, there are no pickles,
no preserves, no gallipots, no stoneware jars,
no spices, no anything of that sort, in the
Store-room of the Wonderful Old Lady.
You might die of hunger in it. Your sweet
tooth would decay and tumble out, before
it could find the least gratification in the
Old Lady's Store-room. There was a mouse
found there once, but it was dead, and nothing
but skin and bone. It is a grim room, fitted
up all round with great iron-safes. They
look as if they might be the Old Lady's
ovens, never heated. But they are very
warm, in the City sense; for when the Old
Lady's two store-keepers have, each with his
own key, unlocked his own one of the double
locks attached to each, and opened the door,
Mr. Matthew Marshall gives you to hold
a little bundle of paper, value two millions