When we withdrew from the inmost fane of this Temple, we were ushered by the priest, who superintends the manufacture of the mysterious Deity’s oracles, into those recesses of her Temple in which these are made. Here we perceived, that, besides carrying on the ordinary operations of banking, the Old Lady is an extensive printer, engraver, bookbinder, and publisher. She maintains a steam-engine to drive letter-press and copper-plate printing machines, besides the other machinery which is employed in various operations, from making thousand pound notes to weighing single sovereigns. It is not until you see three steam-printing machines—such as we use for this publication—and hear that they are constantly revolving, to produce, at so many thousand sheets per hour, the printed forms necessary for the accurate account-keeping of this great Central Establishment and its twelve provincial branches, that you are fully impressed with the magnitude of the Old Lady’s transactions. In this one department no fewer than three hundred account-books are printed, ruled, bound, and used every week. During that short time they are filled with MS. by the eight hundred subordinates and their chiefs. By way of contrast we saw the single ledger which sufficed to post up the daily transactions of the Old Lady on her first establishment in business. It is no bigger than that of a small tradesman’s, and served to contain a record of the year’s accounts. Until within the last few years, visitors to the Bullion Office were shown the old box into which the books of the Bank were put every night for safety during the Old Lady’s early career. This receptacle is no bigger than a seaman’s chest. A spacious fire-proof room is now nightly filled with each day’s accounts, and they descend to it by means of a great hydraulic trap in the Drawing Office; the mountain of calculation when collected being too huge to be moved by human agency.