of office, for we find that at that period, and for many years afterwards, even the warrants for the payments of dividends were signed by two of their body. It was not until after the Bank had existed some forty years that the directors found the business so completely outgrow the accommodation afforded by the Grocers’ Hall as to necessitate a separate building of its own. The foundation of the present building was laid in 1732 on the site of the residence of Sir John Houblon, the first governor of the Bank, and business was commenced in the new premises in 1734. The edifice was greatly enlarged between the years 1770 and 1786, and was completed, pretty much as it now stands, in 1786, an Act having been procured in 1780 to enable the directors to purchase the adjoining church, land, and parsonage—in fact the whole parish—of St. Christopher le Stocks, to the rector of which non-existent parish the Bank pay £400 a year to this day. The drawing office now stands on the site of the old church, the garden being the churchyard. In 1800, when Princes Street was widened, the present wall-screen round the Bank was erected by Sir John Soane giving a uniform appearance to the exterior of the building. There is much in the architectural interior of the Bank which is well worthy of admiration; for instance the quadrangle called the bullion-yard, in Lothbury, the garden, rotunda, and court rooms, &c. The long prison-like stone-colored passages and offices devoted to public business, however, are singularly cold and cheerless, owing chiefly to some apparent, yet unaccountable, objection of the authorities to employ color as a decorative auxiliary; possibly from a fixed but mistaken idea that color is antagonistic to cleanliness and brightness to business.