On opening a street door, which a brass plate beamingly announces to be that of the “Railway Clearing-House,” the stranger sees before him a long passage, on both sides of which are hanging, as if for sale, a variety of very decent-looking hats, cloaks, and coats, which he has no sooner passed than he finds himself in a spacious hall or office 78 feet long, 20 wide, and 26 feet high, in which, at one glance, he sees seated or standing before him, at 13 parallel desks, upwards of a hundred well-dressed clerks, each silently occupied either in writing or in apparently carefully investigating that which others have written. The stillness of the scene, to which the public have no admittance, is very remarkable; and before we enter on the subject of the avocation of those before us, we cannot help observing that, to any one who has lately had an opportunity of seeing the number of half-starved men in Paris who, with interminable mustachios and noble bushy beards, are, with depressed heads, intently engaged in a variety of occupations, down to that of--say--painting a tiny brooch to ornament the bosom of a lady’s gown--it is amusing to contrast a body of such fierce-looking warriors “_à demi-solde_” with the plain, clean, close-shorn men of business, who throughout the United Kingdom are, week after week, month after month, and year after year, unassumingly labouring in behalf of that which republicans only talk of instead of attain--a commonwealth. The business of the Railway Clearing-House is transacted by one manager and 110 clerks. The system comprehends 47 railway companies: in short, it extends to all railways north of the Thames--from Bristol, London, and Harwich, to Aberdeen; and it contains no less than 648 clearing-house stations, by the correspondence of which with the London clearing-office the accounts of the “through” traffic of all the companies is adjudged and settled. The aforesaid business is divided into four departments:-- First, and most important, the goods and live-stock traffic. Second, the coaching traffic. Third, the mileage of carriages and waggons, as also the mileage of tarpaulins for covering waggons. Fourth, lost luggage. GOODS.--From each of the 684 Railway Clearing-House Stations which we have enumerated, there is forwarded to the London office a “daily abstract of goods” (printed in black ink), containing the invoice, the amount carted, the sums paid or the sums to pay, the undercharge, the overcharge, and the description of the traffic “_forwarded_” each day from each station to each of the other stations enumerated in the return. Of these goods the gross total is composed of a number of articles, each of which, from the station from which it is forwarded, is charged according to the established rate agreed on by the companies for “through” goods. Some of these weights are only 14 lbs., in which case they, as well as every package below 56 lbs. (termed “a small”), are charged at a higher rate.