per annum, sell at about $1400. It regulates the discount rate, gauging it so as to maintain its gold reserves, and it also keeps the coinage in good order by weighing every coin that passes through the bank, and casting out the light ones by an ingenious machine that will test thirty-five thousand in a day. It also prints its own notes upon paper containing its own water-mark, which is the chief reliance against forgery. The bank transacts the government business in connection with the British public debt of about $3,850,000,000, all in registered stock, and requiring two hundred and fifty thousand separate accounts to be kept. Its deposits aggregate at least $130,000,000, and its capital is $72,765,000. The bank is the great British storehouse for gold, keeping on deposit the reserves of the joint-stock banks and the private bankers of London, and it will have in its vaults at one time eighty to one hundred millions of dollars in gold in ingots, bullion, or coin, this being the basis on which the entire banking system of England is conducted. It keeps an accurate history of every bank-note that is issued, redeeming each note that comes back into the bank in the course of business, and keeping all the redeemed and cancelled notes. The earliest notes were written with a pen, and from this they have been improved until they have become the almost square white pieces of paper of to-day, printed in bold German text, that are so well known, yet are unlike any other bank-notes in existence. Around the large elliptical table in the bank parlor the directors meet every Thursday to regulate its affairs, and--not forgetting they are true Englishmen--eat a savory dinner, the windows of the parlor looking out upon a little gem of a garden in the very heart of London. The Mansion House, built in 1740, is fronted by a Corinthian portico, with six fluted columns and a pediment of allegorical sculpture. Within is the Egyptian Hall, where the lord mayor fulfils what is generally regarded as his chief duty, the giving of grand banquets. He can invite four hundred persons to the tables in this spacious hall, which is ornamented by several statues by British sculptors, over $40,000 having been expended for its ornamentation. The lord mayor also has a ball-room and other apartments, including his Venetian parlor and the justice room where he sits as a magistrate. From the open space in front of the Mansion House diverge streets running to all parts of London and the great bridges over the Thames. THE INNS OF COURT.