One morning in particular, he was going to a rehearsal at Drury-lane, where I knew his heart was; but finding me very anxious to go to the Mint and the Bank with Mr. Montenero and Berenice, Mowbray, who had a relation a Bank director, immediately offered to accompany us, and procured us the means of seeing every thing in the best possible manner. Nothing could, as he confessed, be less to his taste; and he was surprised that Miss Montenero chose to be of the party. A day spent in viewing the Mint and the Bank, it may perhaps be thought, was a day lost to love--quite the contrary; I had an opportunity of feeling how the passion of love can throw its enchantment over scenes apparently least adapted to its nature. Before this time I had twice gone over every part of these magnificent establishments. I had seen at the Bank the spirit of order operating like predestination, compelling the will of man to act necessarily and continually with all the precision of mechanism. I had beheld human creatures, called clerks, turned nearly into arithmetical machines. But how new did it all appear in looking at it with Berenice! How would she have been delighted if she had seen those machines, “instinct with spirit,” which now perform the most delicate manoeuvres with more than human dexterity--the self-moving balance which indefatigably weighs, accepts, rejects, disposes of the coin, which a mimic hand perpetually presents! What chiefly pleased me in Miss Montenero was the composure, the _sincerity_ of her attention. She was not anxious to display herself: I was the more delighted when I discovered her quickness of comprehension. I was charmed too by the unaffected pleasure she showed in acquiring new ideas, and surprised by the judicious _proportion_ of the admiration she expressed for all that was in various degrees excellent in arrangement, or ingenious in contrivance: in short.... “In short, man,” as Mowbray would say, “in short, man, you were in love, and there’s an end of the matter: if your Berenice had hopped forty paces in the public streets, it would have been the same with you.” That I deny--but I will go on with my story. As we were going away, Mr. Montenero, after thanking Lord Mowbray and his cousin, the Bank director, who had shown and explained every thing to us with polite and intelligent patience, observed that the Bank was to him a peculiarly interesting sight. “You know,” said he, “that we Jews were the first inventors of bills of exchange and bank-notes--we were originally the bankers and brokers of the world.”