In other cities the Exchange has merely a mercantile air--here it has a completely historical one. The imposing statues of English sovereigns around, the most remarkable among whom are Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth, combined with the antique and stately architecture, excite a poetical feeling, to which the thought of the boundless commerce of which London is the centre gives a still deeper significancy. The men, however, who animate the picture soon draw one back into the region of common-place, for selfishness and avarice gleam but too clearly from every eye. In this point of view, the place I am describing, and indeed the whole city, have a repulsive sinister aspect, which almost reminds one of the restless and comfortless throng of the spirits of the damned. The great court of the Exchange is surrounded by covered arcades, on which inscriptions point out to the merchants of every nation their several places of assembling. In the centre stands a statue of Charles the Second, who built this edifice. Its port and bearing precisely express the man whom history describes; not handsome, but somewhat graceful, and with an inveterate levity of features, composed, as if in mockery, to seriousness: a levity which nothing could correct, because it sprang from mediocrity, and which made this king as agreeable and careless a 'roué' as he was a worthless ruler. In niches above stand the busts of other English sovereigns. I have already mentioned Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. They would be striking, independently of all associations;--- Henry, fat and contented, and with an expression of wanton cruelty: Elizabeth, with an air of masculine greatness, and yet of feminine spite. The busts are doubtless copied from the best originals by Holbein. On this story is the celebrated Lloyd's Coffee House, the dirtiest place of the kind in London, which exhibits few traces of the millions daily exchanged in it. Close by is the vast and beautiful building, the Bank of England, containing a number of rooms of various dimensions, generally lighted from above, and destined to the various offices. Hundreds of clerks are here at work, and mechanically conduct the gigantic business, at which the 'nil admirari' becomes a difficult matter to a poor German; especially when he is admitted into the Bullion Office where the ingots are kept, and gazes astounded on the heaps of gold and silver which appear to him to realize the wonders of the Arabian Nights. From hence I proceeded to the Town-House (Guildhall), where the Lord Mayor was just in the act of administering the law. The present Lord Mayor is a bookseller, but cut a very good figure in his blue gown and gold chain, and assumed a truly monarchical dignity. I do not think that he acquitted himself at all worse than a regular officer of justice;--ever since Sancho Panza's time, it is admitted that a sound understanding often discerns the right more truly than learned subtlety.