England. For about a century the Bank sent down to the Exchequer persons duly authorised to examine and receive its own notes. By order of the Statute 46 Geo. III. the Bank clerks so attending at the Exchequer were bound to receive cancelled bank-notes from the Receivers General of Customs, Excise, Stamps, and the Post Office (all which departments kept their money at the Bank of England), and to give each Receiver General credit for them with the Teller as for so much cash. The custom too prevailed of receiving through the medium of the Bank clerks not only these branches of the Revenue, but all moneys paid to the Teller on the public accounts; the general use of papermoney having made it necessary to adopt that course in order to verify the notes presented at the Exchequer, and enable the Teller, consistently with his own responsibility, to accept them in payment of the revenue. In short, all payments nominally made into the Exchequer were received by the Bank, and all moneys nominally issued from the Exchequer were also paid by the Bank, and it was only by a "species of fiction," as Mr. Ellis expressed it, that money appeared to be received and paid by the Exchequer.

This grave fooling did not merely keep a set of intelligent men, who might have been usefully employed, doing nought earthly but translating the record of the business transacted in their names by the Bank clerks out of the intelligible language of English book-keeping into a mixture of dog Latin and hieroglyphics which themselves understood only in part, and which nobody else understood at all; it did not only cost the nation for the sustenance of these persons thus employed upon what was neither useful, ornamental, nor instructive; it was a source of serious annoyance to all persons who had moneys to receive at the Exchequer, and who were unacquainted with its usages. They experienced great difficulty in obtaining the necessary instruments from the Treasury; and on application at the Exchequer, a delay of three or four days was frequently experienced in passing the instruments through the offices. Nor was even this the worst. The deleterious influence of the system extended itself to the finance ministers. Men of genius and powerful character the country undoubtedly has had in this department; but to a great extent their abilities were paralyzed by the engine with which they had to work. They devised ingenious schemes for raising a large revenue in the manner likely to be least felt by the tax-payers, and expending it judiciously; but the incomprehensible formulas of the Exchequer concealed from them the working of their own plans. It was impossible to obtain clear statements of accounts-nobody knew how much money was expended, or where it went to. All was groping in the dark. Talent, integrity, perseverance, were thrown away in the attempt to work out good by the hocus-pocus of the Exchequer.

At last the time came when it could be endured no longer. From the recesses of the Exchequer the wayward goblin-the "lubber fiend" (or, as Scotsmen would call him, "the Brownie"), which for more than a century had taken the work out of the hands of England's finance-ministers, and transacted it after a fantastic and grotesque fashion of his own, "was with sighing sent." But as is usually the case with exorcised spirits, he tore the patient he possessed strangely as he went out of him. He evacuated his fortress, doing at the same time all the mischief he could. When Dousterswivel's familiar was exorcised from the mine at Glenwithershins, the bonfire the boys made of the machinery, wheel-barrows, &c.,

spread over the whole "country-side" the alarm of invasion. And when " the tallies" were ordered to be discontinued in keeping the accounts of the empire, and consigned to the domestics of the Houses of Parliament to heat the stoves with, they set both Lords and Commons in a blaze. The burning of the Houses of Parliament was the last mischievous freak of the goblin which had so long haunted the Exchequer ;-he soared on their flames to his native empyrean, laughing at the human fools he had teased and thwarted to the last.

The old formalities of the Exchequer have been abolished—a good riddance. But it is easier to get rid of a bad system than to invent a better; and, considering the pertinacity with which the abuses of the Exchequer have clung to us, that is, though true, a tolerably strong expression. Comptrollers were substituted for the long array of clerks of the pells, the pipe, and the tallies; money was received and paid into and out of the national treasury with something of the same intelligible simplicity which characterised these transactions among private individuals; it became possible for ministers to see how every farthing of the national money went, if they had a mind and would take the trouble to do so. But that all possibility of speculation had not been done away with has been pretty plainly demonstrated by the gigantic swindling of Solari, Rapallo, and Smith. The truth is, that a bad old system has been abolished, but that no system has been substituted in its stead. The Exchequer is like the man out of whom seven devils had been cast: it is "empty, swept, and garnished." If care be not taken to occupy it, the old tenant may return, bringing with him, in all likelihood, some of his demoniac kindred worse than himself.

A treasury, we have said, is the key-stone of the arch of government. Let us vary the metaphor. The Treasury of Great Britain is the keep of the fortress in which the Administration strengthens itself-for a minister's tenure of office in this country is but a series of parliamentary sieges and defences. The "keep" of the fort of office at Whitehall is most skilfully placed. It stands in the centre of the fortifications. The War-office, the main-guard, is immediately in front; and the Admiralty, like a horn-work thrown out before, keeps watch and ward with its semaphore. Downing street, the quarters of the Premier and Secretary of State, are in the rear, judiciously covered by the keep. And so long as the Premier's banner is seen waving over this central strong-hold so long are his troops assured of pay and "provant," bold, merry, and faithful.

The personal associations of the Treasury are scarcely so interesting as those of the Horse Guards and Admiralty, topics which have already been discussed in 'London.' In the case of the latter we forget the mere business-organisation of desks, stools, clerks, ledgers, and minute-books; the fancy is carried away to the heroes sent forth by that machinery, and of their exploits in all quarters of the earth. The Horse Guards and Admiralty are poetical; the Treasury is prose itself. Even the First Lord thereof-or, as he would once have been called, the Lord High Treasurer-if he is viewed in his capacity of financier (and not of Premier, which in general he is), appears little better than a sort of land-steward -certainly upon a most Brobdignagian scale, but retaining all the commonplace of the character, magnified, if possible, by the colossal dimensions of the business he manages. And as for the clerks-but the clerks in Government-offices are a race to whom we have as yet scarcely paid sufficient attention.

They are of two kinds-the upper and the under; the former rather disdaining

the humble designation of clerks and aspiring to be secretaries. In one respect, both classes agree: they are clerks for life. Their rise in the world, like that of a caged squirrel turning a mill, must be limited to the building in which their work is done. They may be advanced from the bottom to the top of their " department," but out of it there is for them no egress. Their mind shrinks and accommodates itself to its shell; they become not men of the world, but men of the office. Their jokes are interchanged, their cares are communicated to, their holidays are shared with, the inmates of their own or the neighbouring offices. They have cant phrases and conventional allusions no one else can understand. They, the officials, are a people apart; when they go into a mixed company it is like going among foreigners.

It is a mistake to imagine that familiarity with great objects expands the mind; on the contrary, familiarity reduces the objects contemplated to the scale of the mind itself. Switzerland has produced no poet, and Ossian is apocryphal. All our poets have been town-bred, or, at least, brought up amid scenery which the hunters of avalanches, and mountains rising above the snow-line, and cataracts, call tame and common-place. Alpine scenery impresses only impressible minds— cultivated minds: if a Swiss or Scotch Highlander by accident get civilised, the rocks, glens, and corries which drew poetry out of a Byron have been spoiled to him by being familiar from boyhood. He is like one to whom Shakspere has been spoiled by having been made to spout him at an elocution-class for a tin medal. Talk not of Swiss maladie-du-pays and ranz-des-vaches: to like is not to be able to appreciate. There is no improbability in Byron's assertion that his dog was the warmest friend he ever had; yet Byron knew many who were better than a whole litter of puppies. So with our clerks in Government-offices. The strokes of diplomacy, the evolution of national power which strike intelligent by-standers with admiration or awe, are to them mere tricks of the trade, inspiring in them no more lively emotions than a cleverly-drawn bargain by his master does in a wholesale shoemaker's apprentice. And yet our clerks are proud of knowing, or being thought to know, all the technical details of political business, and on the strength of that knowledge take upon them to instruct everybody in everything. It is a pleasure to watch the odd contortions of countenance with which they listen to any one pronouncing an opinion on some incident in the wars of Scinde or China, who does not even know the kind of paper on which a despatch is written, or how the leaves of office-copies are fastened at the upper right-hand corner with green ribbon. Your Government-clerk generally occupies a neat cottage in one of the suburbs, within comfortable walking-distance of his office, for the sake of digestion, and, in case it should rain, on a good line for 'busses. A number of Government-clerks will generally be found to have settled down upon neighbouring houses, as rooks do upon neighbouring trees; partly, it may be, because what are local recommendations to one are so to the whole of them, but still more because, like the rooks, they enjoy a neighbourly"caw, caw." About the same hour of the morning they may be seen issuing from their respective doors, after leisurely and comfortably shaving, breakfasting, and brushing, and uniting slowly into one stream, like drops of water on the glass of the window, they move leisurely townward together. Staid decorous men—as all who can keep a place of routine duties for years must be, with the quiet consciences which doing nothing wrong if people do nothing very

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particularly good inspires-and with the comfortable state of body produced by regular easy work, sufficient to keep men from fretting about other matters and not enough to make them fret about itself-are easily amused. Their topics of conversation may be counted on your fingers: in Spring and Autumn they discuss the change from a winter dress to a summer one, or vice versa. In summer they talk of yester-evening's walk, and in winter of yester-evening's drive homewards, and the incidents of bad sixpences, new 'busses on the road, &c. These varied by remarks on asparagus, oysters, and other "fruits in their season," form the staple of their discourse which has whiled away their time on the road into town for years. As they drop into their respective dens even this slender vivacity subsides they become mere copying, fetching, and carrying (of intelligence, however, as well as papers) machines. It is a beautiful arrangement in the mechanism of the human mind which enables man to put forth just so much of his thinking powers as the necessity of his sphere may call for. Your true clerk or secretary, if touched by a question, begins to think as the larum of a clock begins to whir when touched; but left unquestioned, he proceeds with his mechanical duties thoughtless. These congenial souls return homeward in a more straggling line of march; the married men (official characters either marry very early in life or not at all) betake themselves direct to their families as in duty bound; the bachelors are sadly addicted to dining out. They are well-drilled, however, always come to time in the morning, and, as they advance in life, learn the necessity of husbanding their strength. If you take up your station on their homeward road between ten and eleven P.M., you are certain to see them walking homeward with very red faces and steps so steady as to betray an effort. The house of a Government clerk is rather a favorite place of visit for ladies of a certain age, especially if he be a bachelor and addicted to a fine garden.

These are your head clerks, and also, be it noted, your clerks of the old school. A new generation is rising up with more assumption and less character; and whatever philosophers say, every man endowed with the artistical sense requires character, that is, individuality, in the men whom he is to respect. The youngsters positively affect literary tastes; nay, some of them have perpetrated tragedies and treatises on statesmanship (by which term they understand dissertations on red tape, folding of letters, and other official incidents), statistics, &c. Their sphere of greatness is in literary and scientific societies, where they contrive to make themselves of importance by always having some driblet of exclusive information to communicate. They are remarkable of an evening for the whiteness of their kid gloves, and the martinet precision with which they retain their hats in their hands.

The subordinate government clerk is a hybrid between the government messenger and the clerk properly so called. He is, perhaps, the happiest of the whole family. The time was when his leg of mutton baked, with the potatoes done in the dripping-pan, was duly brought to him on a Sunday from the baker's about one o'clock, and he never sits down to dinner on that day at five with a decanter of sherry before him, but he thanks Providence with all the fervour of a Pepys for his advancement. After such a one has occupied a stool in the office for several years, he is generally sent, as a first step in his advancement, to carry a confidential message to some chargé-d'affaires, or to execute some small commission in one of the colonies. An Englishman fresh from London is such

a rarity there that his society is courted by the attaches and young officers, and the chef, after having remarked, pro formá, in an assertion meant to pass muster as an interrogation not to be answered, lest the answer be different from what is wanted Mr. is a respectable sort of person"-asks him once to dinner. The poor clerk is bewildered with his greatness: at pic-nics, and similar occasions, he is the butt of the young scape-graces who have got hold of him, but he knows it not, though their jokes are pretty broadly practical-he is in good company. Abroad he was in request because he was from home; at home he is an oracle, because he has been abroad. Projectors of a continental tour take Mr. -'s opinion as to the best mode of travelling, and the most interesting routes, because he has been abroad, and is an official character. In his office he is promoted to a small room, back, down three pair of stairs from the ground-floor, which he has all to himself. His salary is augmented, sufficiently to enable him, with the aid of frequent invitations to dine out from citizens about to make the grand tour, to indulge himself of a Sunday in the manner above alluded to. And he remains for life an oracle on the rise and fall of stocks, and the changes of empire-a" practical man," mind ye, who knows things before they get into the newspapers-the source of information for writers of leaders in the daily prints, and for the representatives of the new constituencies of the year '32, as superior clerks are the accredited crammers of ministers, and the aristocratic members of the legislature when condemned to make a speech in parliament.

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The subordinate clerk is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a Cockney; and the Cockney character is indelible. The upper clerks consist of a pretty equable apportionment of the natives of the three kingdoms. All become subdued to the element in which they live-" nothing in them but doth suffer a seachange." But they take the official impress or mould with different degrees of facility or completeness. The Irishman retains most of his individuality; his wild spirits, and carelessness of what people think, are incapable of adopting any other habits than those which nature prompts. The Englishman becomes sufficiently officialised to be known at once for what he is. But it is the Scotsman, pliant, yet tough, wax to receive and marble to retain," who becomes office all over. The gregarious nature of Scotsmen is amazing. At intervals flocks of them wing their way southward, and settle down like locusts upon every green herb. The oldest irruption in the memory of living man was that which brought, among others, the illustrious historian of British India. The next was that which brought Wilkie, and the ex-chancellor, Baron of St. Andrews. All do not find accommodation in public offices; but it is astonishing how many find their way in at these periodical migrations; and more than any others they become mere office furniture. They think minute-books, look ledgers, and walk like stools trundled from place to place. They are endowed with all that condescending propensity: to lecture which characterised Sir Richie Moniplies of the ancient house of Castle Collops. And pet amid all this ossification or petrifaction of the human soul there is a drop of kindly feeling left at the core-concentrated like the liquid drop of brandy in the heart of a frozen bottle-at least for their countrymen.

Enough of these occupants of Government offices-at Whitehall, in Cannon Row, Somerset House, Pall Mall, the India House, and the Tower. Any one of the body may be taken as a sample-" he is knight of the shire, and represents them all." But the present seemed the fittest opportunity that has occurred in