d supported by twelve columns, each
forty-one feet high. Within is an open area surrounded by an arcade,
while at the rear is Lloyds, the underwriters' offices, where the
business of insuring ships is transacted in a hall ninety-eight feet
long and forty feet wide. Wellington's statue stands in front of the
Exchange, and in the middle of the central area is a statue of Queen
Victoria. The Bank of England, otherwise known as the "Old Lady of
Threadneedle Street," covers a quadrangular space of about four acres,
with a street on each side. It is but one story high, and has no windows
on the outside, the architecture being unattractive. The interior is
well adapted for the bank offices, which are constructed around nine
courts. The bank has been built in bits, and gradually assumed its
present size and appearance. It was founded in 1691 by William Paterson,
but it did not remove to its present site until 1734. Its affairs are
controlled by a governor, deputy governor, and twenty-four directors,
and the bank shares of $500 par, paying about ten per cent. dividends
per annum, sell at about $1400. It regulates the discount rate, gauging
it so as to maintain its gold reserves, and it also keeps the coinage in
good order by weighing every coin that passes through the bank, and
casting out the light ones by an ingenious machine that will test
thirty-five thousand in a day. It also prints its own notes upon paper
containing its own water-mark, which is the chief reliance against
forgery. The bank transacts the government business in connection with
the British public debt of about $3,850,000,000, all in registered
stock, and requiring two hundred and fifty thousand separate accounts to
be kept. Its deposits aggregate at least $130,000,000, and its capital
is $72,765,000. The bank is the great British storehouse for gold,
keeping on deposit the reserves of the joint-stock banks and the private
bankers of London, and it will have in its vaults at one time eighty to
one hundred millions of dollars in gold in ingots, bullion, or coin,
this being the basis on which the entire banking system of England is
conducted. It keeps an accurate history of every bank-note that is
issued, redeeming each note that comes back into the bank in the course
of business, and keeping all the redeemed and cancelled notes. The
earliest notes were written with a pen, and from this they have been
improved until they have become the almost square white pieces