always appeared the army of clerks seated in saturnine silence at
the desks, or gliding with grave celerity about the place, and
variously employed in balancing enormous accounts, shovelling up
heaps of sovereigns, receiving and distributing bank-paper of vast
value as coolly and unconcernedly as if engaged in counting out so
many chestnuts. A strange feeling must, I suspect, perturb the mind
of a newly-appointed clerk amidst all that astounding wealth, until
the genius of the place has so moulded his thoughts and perceptions,
that he has come to regard himself as but one of the dumb and dead
parts of a mighty machine, over whose action he has no more control
than he has over the courses of the stars. All these issue, cheque,
gold, bullion departments, with their numerous busy officials, are
in truth but the husk and body of the establishment. They by whose
will and breath it is animated and directed are nowhere at this hour
to be seen. They met on this as on every other morning in their hall
of inquisition--the Bank parlour--and decided there, without appeal,
without reasons assigned, in the absence of the parties whose
commercial reputation was trembling in the balance, upon the course
of financial action to be pursued, and upon whose paper should or
should not be discounted. A terrible stroke, sharper than a dagger
could inflict, politely, blandly as it is performed, is that which
falls upon a merchant for the first time informed that the Bank must
decline to discount his bills! The announcement is usually received
as smilingly as it is made. 'It is a matter of very slight
consequence, _etcetera_;' but if you had been near enough, you might
have noticed, as the clerk did, the quiver of the lip beneath that
sickly smile, and that the face was as white as the rejected paper
the merchant's trembling fingers were replacing in his pocket-book.
And no wonder that he should be thus agitated, for the refusal has,
he well knew, thrust him down the first steps of the steep and