Such is the SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. At least, such it was forty years ago, when I knew it,--a magnificent relic! What alterations may have been made in it since, I have had no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take for granted, has not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated the face of the sleeping waters. A thicker crust by this time stagnates upon it. The moths, that were then battening upon its obsolete ledgers and day-books, have rested from their depredations, but other light generations have succeeded, making fine fretwork among their single and double entries. Layers of dust have accumulated (a superfoetation of dirt!) upon the old layers, that seldom used to be disturbed, save by some curious finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore the mode of book-keeping in Queen Anne's reign; or, with less hallowed curiosity, seeking to unveil some of the mysteries of that tremendous HOAX, whose extent the petty peculators of our day look back upon with the same expression of incredulous admiration, and hopeless ambition of rivalry, as would become the puny face of modern conspiracy contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's superhuman plot. Peace to the manes of the BUBBLE! Silence and destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial! Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring and living commerce,--amid the fret and fever of speculation--with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India-house about thee, in the hey-day of present prosperity, with their important faces, as it were, insulting thee, their _poor neighbour out of business_--to the idle and merely contemplative,--to such as me, old house! there is a charm in thy quiet:--a cessation--a coolness from business--an indolence almost cloistral--which is delightful! With what reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at eventide! They spoke of the past:--the shade of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and accountants puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But thy great dead tomes, which scarce three degenerate clerks of the present day could lift from their enshrining shelves--with their old fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric interlacings--their sums in triple columniations, set down with formal superfluity of cyphers--with pious sentences at the beginning, without which our religious ancestors never ventured to open a book of business, or bill of lading--the costly vellum covers of some of them almost persuading us that we are got into some _better library_,--are very agreeable and edifying spectacles. I can look upon these defunct dragons with complacency. Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled penknives (our ancestors had every thing on a larger scale than we have hearts for) are as good as any thing from Herculaneum. The pounce-boxes of our days have gone retrograde.