sturdy Manchester warehouseman, and begged
his advice how to proceed with prudent secresy.
Our neighbour at once relieved a good part of
my anxiety by telling me, that I ought at
once to enrol our firm as subscribers to Perry's
Bankrupt and Insolvent Registry Office,
where we should be certain to obtain the
fullest and most valuable information
regarding all suspected or improper characters.

I took down the address; and, without
pausing to tell William my mission, made my
way directly to King's Arms Buildings,
Change Alley. I had been through the Alley
hundreds of times; yet had never caught
sight of this office. Even now that I went
in search of it in broad mid-day, it was no
such easy matter to find it. Turning sharp
round that corner of the paved court which
is graced by dozens of gaudy frames enclosing
pictures of enormous mansions, with parks,
fish-ponds, and a lady gracefully leaping a six-
barred gate, on a thorough-bred hunter with a
neck like the middle arch of London Bridge,
(which I in my early days believed were the
actual representations of the many fine
properties advertised for sale at Garraway's
close by,) I found myself ascending a wide,
dark and dingy staircase. The strange old
edifice abounded in lofty ornamented ceilings,
carved wainscoats, and heavy creaking doors.
Once it had been a City Hotel; and when I
turned in through the wide folding doors
and looked about me, I saw that the
apartment had been, in days long past, a concert
and ball-room. How changed since then!
The little raised orchestra was piled up with
dusty records of insolvency: the fiddles and
fifes were replaced by files of the London
Gazette and reports of police cases. The
sounds of mirth and revelry were exchanged
for a word or two murmured through that
enormous old room from one of the few clerks
as though they proceeded from a defunct or
smothered trombone. The whole place
appeared gloomy and mysterious. An enclosure
warded off all visitors from the interior.
From one end to the other nothing was visible
but books—solid, grubby, hard-fisted books.
They looked—frowning solemnly down upon
me—like the condemned ranks in Dante's
Inferno, bidding me take warning; or winked
at me, as if to lure me on to knavery, from
miles of shelves. They beckoned to me
hideously from acres of tables. Puckering up
their parchment fronts, or turning upon me
their forbidding backs, I felt myself tempted
and menaced by turns; and, surrounded by
lost characters and dead reputations, fancied
I had got into a Chamber of Commercial
Horrors, or an Old Bailey with all its
sentences ruthlessly docketed, and ready to be
put in force at a minute's notice by the
Recorder himself, who stood beside me, calmly
waiting to execute judgment.

And his clerks, how solemnly they went
about their work!—stealthily, suspiciously
—as if they expected to find runaway
bankrupts hidden between the leaves of the ledgers.
How they kept moving about from one solid
book to the other! now making a scratch or
a mark in some page; then entering a note
in a memorandum-book. And I watched
them thus until I began to think that they
might be unhappy insolvents, placed in this
Basinghall Street Penitentiary, to expiate
certain offences against the commercial code
by the contemplation of ponderous loads of
debt which they were unable to bear. Then
I wondered whether the Sybilline Books could
have been anything like those they were
slaving at; for, if they were, I didn't wonder
at the Roman king not liking the look of
them.

In the midst of these reveries I was aroused
by a mild voice at my side requesting to
know my pleasure. An elderly placid-looking
man was before me clad in black, with waistcoat
buttoned close to his chin. A single glance
convinced me that he was the person I
wanted: and I was right. He was the
principal of the establishment; the Recorder.
My errand was soon told, and as readily
comprehended; for, when I hinted that I
thought the affair I had come about would
occasion some difficult and troublesome
inquiries, he smiled, and assured me that he
had had dozens of inquiries far more
complicated than mine, almost daily, since his
registry was first opened forty odd years ago.

Had he been so long engaged in that
particular occupation? Yes, he commenced his
registry office so long since as the year one
thousand eight hundred and ten, when
business was not conducted to a tithe the extent
it is now, and when there was not nearly the
same necessity for protection to the honest
trader against swindlers and reckless dealers;
for that was the object of his institution.

Leading me inside the railing and within
the long ranges of tables and desks, he assured
me that, so perfect were all the arrangements
connected with his business, that not a single
bankruptcy, insolvency, or composition with
creditors had occurred; not a single commercial
fraud had been committed, nor one isolated
case of swindling since one thousand eight
hundred and ten, which was not to be found
duly recorded and indexed with all particulars
in his books.

Were those the records of misfortune and
fraud? I pointed to a vast collection of
ponderous tomes spread along three or four
massive tables.—O no! those thirty-five huge
volumes, of a thousand pages each, formed
simply the Index to Mr. Perry's general sets
of books.

To give me some idea of the extent and
system of his business he flung open one of
those gigantic volumes. It yawned, and
creaked, and groaned, as if it had been a
bankrupt taken in execution. Such an array
of Joneses and Browns and Smiths as
were digested within it, I never before
witnessed. The Post Office Directory is the