But the stranger who would gather the most impressive notion of the grandeur of the City should pause at Fenchurch Street, before entering Cornhill. Here the crowd, the block, the hum, the roar, even the crowd pushing on, and the state and solemnity of the buildings and streets, will most affect him. Here are the darkened streets of the great banks--some carrying on their business in huge palaces where the street is so narrow that the lamps have to be lit; others preferring to retain the old-fashioned structures. There is one very striking building at the corner of Throgmorton Street--The National Provincial Bank of England, monumental almost, and of really good architecture, displaying a row of statues on the top. Another building of great state and pretension is the Consolidated Bank, in Threadneedle Street. Through all the doors are pressing and pouring in a stream of persons, all in a hurry. Every place--telegraphic, shipping exchanges, etc.--seems crowded to overflowing. Business is everywhere. Perhaps the grandest and stateliest of all these City streets is Lombard Street, not from its associations merely, but from the imposing character of its mercantile palaces. As we enter from Threadneedle Street end there is quite an air of magnificence in the massive, richly-wrought buildings which line both sides of the narrow winding way in a sharp curve. The great pile at the corner, where the “Crédit Lyonnais” carries on its business, has a stately effect. A picturesque incident of the City streets is the recurrence of lanes of warehouses striking out of the busy highway, and which, all narrow, and lined by lofty warehouses, wind down, where they can, to the river. These alleys, not so long since, could be found in one long, uninterrupted course from the Strand to Wapping, but the Embankment has cut off the earlier series. In the City nothing is so genuine or so truly mercantile as these not unpicturesque little descents, with their cranes, lofts, and waggons waiting below. One of these vistas, which suggests a scene in a foreign city, is the view down Fish Street Hill, the Monument rising on the left, the bottom closed by the imposing effective church of St. Magnus and its elegant steeple. A fine old tree blooms beside it. Hard by is the steep and gloomy St. Botolph’s Lane, filled with its venerable and busy warehouses, every floor having its crane. There is something pleasing in this old-fashioned shape of trade, and the whole suggests the traditional view of the London merchant and his business.