The ordinary associations called up by the notion of an old lady’s comfortable parlour, were not fulfilled by this visit. There is no domestic snugness, no easy chair, no cat, no parrot, no japanned bellows, no portrait of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold in the Royal Box at Drury Lane Theatre; no kettle-holder, no worsted rug for the urn, no brass footman for the buttered toast, in the parlour in Threadneedle Street. On the contrary, the room is extensive—supported by pillars; is of grand and true proportions; and embellished with architectural ornaments in the best taste. It has a long table for the confidential managers of the Old Lady’s affairs (she calls these gentlemen her Directors) to sit at; and usually, a side table fittingly supplied with a ready-laid lunch. The Old Lady’s “Drawing” Room is as unlike—but then she is such a peculiar Old Lady!—any ordinary Drawing-room as need be. It has hardly any furniture, but desks, stools, and books. It is of immense proportions, and has no carpet. The vast amount of visitors the Old Lady receives between nine and four every day, would make lattice-work in one forenoon of the stoutest carpet ever manufactured. Everybody who comes into the Old Lady’s Drawing-room delivers his credentials to her gentlemen-ushers, who are quick in examining the same, and exact in the observance of all points of form. So highly-prized, however, is a presentation (on any grand scale) to the Old Lady’s Drawing-room, notwithstanding its plainness, that there is no instance of a Drawing-room at Court being more sought after. Indeed, it has become a kind of proverb that the way to Court often lies through the Old Lady’s apartments, and some suppose that the Court Sticks are of gold and silver in compliment to her. As to the individual appearance of the Old Lady herself, we are authorised to state that the portrait of a Lady (accompanied by eleven balls on a sprig, and a beehive) which appears in the upper left-hand corner of all the Bank of England Notes, is NOT the portrait of _the_ Lady. She invariably wears a cap of silver paper, with her yellow hair gathered carefully underneath. When she carries any defensive or offensive weapon, it is not a lance, but a pen; and her modesty would on no account permit her to appear in such loose drapery as is worn by the party in question—who we understand is depicted as a warning to the youthful merchants of this country to avoid the fate of George Barnwell.