AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
187 
THE BANK OF ENGLAND. 
The Bank of England must be seen on the 
inside as well as out, and to get into the in¬ 
terior of this remarkable building, to observe 
the operations of an institution that exerts 
more moral and political power than any 
sovereign in Europe, you must have an or¬ 
der from the Governor of the Bank. The 
building occupies an irregular area of eight 
acres of ground ; an edifice of no architec¬ 
tural beauty, with not one window towards 
the street, being lighted altogether from the 
roof of the inclosed areas. The ordinary 
business apartments differ from those in our 
banks only in their extent, a thousand clerks 
being constantly on duty, and driven with 
business at that. But to form any adequate 
idea of what the Bank is, we must penetrate 
its recesses, its vaults, and offices, where we 
shall see such operations as are not known 
in Wall-street. I was led, on presenting my 
card of admission, into a private room, 
where, after the delay of a few moments, a 
messenger came and conducted me through 
the mighty and mysterious building. Down 
we went into a room where the notes of the 
Bank received yesterday were now exam¬ 
ined, compared with the entries in the books, 
and stored away. The Bank of England 
never issues the same note a second time. It 
receives in the ordinary course of business 
about £800,000, or $4,000,000 daily in notes; 
these are put up in parcels according to their 
denomination, boxed up with the date of 
their reception, and are kept ten years ; at 
the expiration of which period they are taken 
out and ground up in the mill which I saw 
running, and made again into paper. If in 
the course of those ten years any dispute 
in business, or law-suit should arise 
concerning the payment of any note, the 
Bank can produce the identical bill. To 
meet the demand for notes so constantly 
used up, the Bank has its own paper-makers, 
its own printers, its own engravers, all at 
work under the same roof and it even makes 
the machinery by which most of its own 
work is done. A complicated but beautiful 
operation is a register, extending from the 
printing office to the banking offices, which 
marks every sheet of paper that is struck off 
from the press, so that the printers can not 
manufacture a single sheet of blank notes 
that is not recorded in the Bank. On the 
same principle of exactness, a shaft is made 
to pass from one apartment to another, con¬ 
necting a clock in sixteen business wings of 
the establishment, and regulating them with 
such precision that the whole of them are 
always pointing to the same second of time. 
In another room was a machine, exceed¬ 
ingly simple, for detecting light gold coins. 
A row of them dropped one by one upon a 
spring scale ; if the piece of gold was of the 
standard weight, the scale rose to a certain 
height, and the coin slid off upon one side 
into a box ; if less than the standard, it rose 
a little higher, and the coin slid off upon the 
other side. I asked the weigher what was 
the average number of light coins that came 
into his hands, and strangely enough, he said 
it, w'as a question he was not allowed to an¬ 
swer. 
The next room I entered was that in which 
the notes are deposited which are ready for 
issue. “ We have thirty-two millions of 
pounds sterling in this room,” the officer re¬ 
marked to me, “ will you take a little of it ?” 
I told him it would be vastly agreeable, and 
he handed me a million sterling (five millions 
of dollars), which I received with many 
thanks for his liberality, but he insisted on 
my depositing it with him again, as it would 
be hardly safe to carry so much money into 
the streets. I very much fear that I shall 
never see that money again. In the vault 
beneath the floor was a Director and the 
Cashier counting the bags of gold which 
men were pitching down to them, each bag 
containing a thousand pounds sterling, just 
from the mint. This world of money seemed 
to realize the fables of Eastern wealth, and 
gave me new and strong impressions of the 
magnitude of the the business done here, 
and the extent of the relations of this one 
institution to the commerce of the world.— 
Prime's Travels in Europe. 
DIFFERENT CLIMATES ALIKE COMFORTABLE. 
An erroneous idea generally prevails re¬ 
specting climate, as effecting personal com¬ 
fort. The dwellers in the sunny south pity 
the New-Englanders, because doomed to 
shiver in so cold a climate. They, in turn, 
bless their stars that they are not wading in 
the snows of Newfoundland. 
I have been led, by observation and exper¬ 
ience, to doubt whether the people of any 
one country have much, if any advantage, in 
the matter of climate, over others. 
Our ideas of pleasure and pain are inti¬ 
mately connected with, if not based upon 
the principle of contrast. In our idea of 
temperature, we have less regard to the ac¬ 
tual than to the comparative degree of 
warmth. 
In the report of one of the exploring 
expeditions in the northern seas, it is 
said that, on a certain occasion the crew 
were greatly elated with signs of a thaw, 
the mercury having risen to within 40° be¬ 
low zero. Having been subject to a much 
intenser degree of cold, they felt, as did the 
boy, whose father had administered to him a 
severe flagellation, “greatly refreshed.” 
It may well be doubted whether the peo¬ 
ple of Maine suffer more from cold than do 
they of Virginia. 
Touching the weather, it is much as it is 
with the tariff—all that the people want is to 
have the line of governmental policy settled 
—to know what can be depended upon. So 
of the weather. The down-easter, knowing 
that from the middle of November to the 
middle of April the ground is to be covered 
with snow, and uninterrupted cold weather 
is to prevail, he wraps his fur coat about 
him, inflates his lungs, braces up his nerves, 
and thinks no more of the cold than the 
“ rugged Russian bear.” 
The dweller in the Old Dominion, on the 
other hand, regarding warm weather as the 
rule, and cold as the exception, makes no 
provision for the latter. But when the 
northern blasts come, as come they will, he 
wraps his fig-leaf coat about him, and seeks 
shelter within the inclosure of his airy man¬ 
sion, so constructed as to exclude heat rather 
than cold. 
Then there is another consideration which 
greatly favors dwellers in cold latitudes. 
While the earth is covered with snow, there 
is but little evaporation. The atmosphere is 
consequently dry, and storms are unfrequent. 
Where there is no snow, it is far otherwise. 
The whole surface being covered with 
water, evaporation is rapid, and the atmo¬ 
sphere is surcharged with vapor, and the pe¬ 
culiar drillings which characterize a March 
wind in New-England, prevail during the 
winter months. 
Agriculturally, the snowy region has many 
advantages. It is better for the soil to be 
covered during the winter months. That 
there is any virtue in the remark, “ snow is 
the poor man’s manure,” I don’t believe. 
But certain it is, that grasses and grains are 
benefited by being thus protected. 
Snow is an imperfect conductor of caloric, 
consequently the surface being protected 
from the cold of mid-winter, the heat from 
within dissolves the frost, and when the 
snow disappears in spring, the frost is gone 
from the soil. It is not uncommon to find 
the grass growing before the snow is off. 
Fields are ready for plowing soon after they 
are bare; so that stock will live, and seed 
may be gotten into the ground nearly as soon 
in Vermont as in Connecticut. Then, for 
doing business, the snowy regions have 
greatly the advantage. Lumbering is with 
great difficulty carried on where there is no 
snow. The lumber lands in Maryland and 
Virginia would be worth twice as much as 
they now are with northern winters for the 
removal of the lumber. 
But 1 will say no more lest I get up an 
emigration fever towards Greenland.—R. B. 
H., in Plow , Loom and Anvil. 
THE PRINTER. 
The night grows late—the streets are 
hushed—the moonbeams fleck the deserted 
pavement, and strews its slumberous pop¬ 
pies over the inhabitants of the silent city. 
All are at rest save the printer at his case. 
Dreams, lovely as the winged cherubs, 
hover about the repose of man and maiden ; 
visions as pure as lilies, and beautiful as the 
sunset of early summer, haunt the couches 
of matron and chdd ; but to the printer all 
is reality, toil and weariness. 
How nimbly and cheerfully does he adjust 
the faithful types, as if he took no note of 
time—as if the duties that were wearing out 
his life were more a diversion than a labori r 
ous occupation. But amid their monoto¬ 
nous discharges, believe us, the printer 
thinks of home and sweet rest, and sighs 
within himself for the better lot of which 
others are possessed. And yet there is no 
repose for him, though the night tramps in, 
and the jocund dawn will soon appear. 
Why do his motions grow less rapid—why 
move his fingers in so deliberate and me 
chanical away ? Whence is the smile that 
lingers on his lip, like the first sunbeam of 
early morning'? There is a gentle presence 
at his side ; an eye blue as violets, glancing 
in at his own ; an accent sweet as music, en¬ 
trancing his ear, and reaching his heart. It 
is but a moment.; it was but a reverie ; it 
did not even win him from his occupation; 
it only caused his hand to falter, not to cease ; 
the printer awakens to his busy toil again. 
Ye who receive our weekly favor, and 
wonder, perhaps listlessly, over its pages, 
remember, that it is the fruit of toil, which 
was active and untiring, while you were 
quietly sleeping ; that your convenience and 
comfort is bought with the price of weariness. 
WELL EMPLOYED. 
We heard a pretty good one the other day, 
which we think merits a wider circulation 
than it has yet got. The story runs that 
some rough-looking, honest-faced Hosier 
went into a fancy store in Cincinnati, in 
hunt of a situation. The proprietor or head 
clerk, was sitting in the counting room, with 
his feet comfortably cocked up on a table, 
and contemplating human life through the 
softening influence of cigar smoke. Our 
Hosier friend addressed him modestly, ad¬ 
dressed him, as follows : “ Do you want to 
hire a hand about your establishment, sir?” 
The clerk looked up indifferently, but seeing 
his customer, concluded to have some fun 
out of him, so he answered very briskly, at 
the same time pulling out a large and costly 
handkerchief and blowing his nose on it— 
“Yes Sir. What sort of a situation do you 
want?” “ Well,” says the Hosier, “I’m not 
particular; I’m out of work, and most any¬ 
thing’ll do for me a while.” “ Yes ; well I 
can give you a situation that will suit you,” 
and he made another deposit in his magnifi¬ 
cent handkerchief. “ What is it? What is 
to be done, and what doyou give?” inquired 
the other. “ Well,” was the answer, “ I 
