(a superfoetation of dirt!) upon the old layers, that seldom used to be disturbed, save by some curious finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore the mode of book-keeping in Queen Anne’s reign; or, with less hallowed curiosity, seeking to unveil some of the mysteries of that tremendous HOAX, whose extent the petty peculators of our day look back upon with the same expression of incredulous admiration, and hopeless ambition of rivalry, as would become the puny face of modern conspiracy contemplating the Titan size of Vaux’s superhuman plot.

Peace to the manes of the BUBBLE!  Silence and destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial!

Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring and living commerce,—­amid the fret and fever of speculation—­with the Bank, and the ’Change, and the India-house about thee, in the hey-day of present prosperity, with their important faces, as it were, insulting thee, their poor neighbour out of business—­to the idle and merely contemplative,—­to such as me, old house! there is a charm in thy quiet:—­a cessation—­a coolness from business—­an indolence almost cloistral—­which is delightful!  With what reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at eventide!  They spoke of the past:—­the shade of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by me, stiff as in life.  Living accounts and accountants puzzle me.  I have no skill in figuring.  But thy great dead tomes, which scarce three degenerate clerks of the present day could lift from their enshrining shelves—­with their old fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric interlacings—­their sums in triple columniations, set down with formal superfluity of cyphers—­with pious sentences at the beginning, without which our religious ancestors never ventured to open a book of business, or bill of lading—­the costly vellum covers of some of them almost persuading us that we are got into some better library,—­are very agreeable and edifying spectacles.  I can look upon these defunct dragons with complacency.  Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled penknives (our ancestors had every thing on a larger scale than we have hearts for) are as good as any thing from Herculaneum.  The pounce-boxes of our days have gone retrograde.

The very clerks which I remember in the South-Sea House—­I speak of forty years back—­had an air very different from those in the public offices that I have had to do with since.  They partook of the genius of the place!

They were mostly (for the establishment did not admit of superfluous salaries) bachelors.  Generally (for they had not much to do) persons of a curious and speculative turn of mind.  Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned before.  Humorists, for they were of all descriptions; and, not having been brought together in early life (which has a tendency to assimilate the members of corporate bodies to each other), but, for the most part, placed in this house in ripe or