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Exhibitions of paintings, panoramas, and dioramas are placarded on every Wax figures, bronze work, marble statuary, are presented for the examination and patronage of the people. Public gardens, in which are many pleasures during the day, and music and fireworks in the evening, are continually open; while performances of a lower character, immoral, beastly, and degrading, are held covertly and in concealment. Whatever may be a man's taste, he can find something which will accord with it; whatever may be his inclination, he can find something to gratify it. He can select the purest society and pleasures, the most refined and delicate enjoyment, or plunge down into the depths of shame and infamy. He can feast his soul on the refinement and delight of literature and religion, or he can bury himself in the shades of crime, and conceal himself in dens of vice, into which the sun does not penetrate at noonday.

Of the public buildings of London I have but little time to speak: some will come up hereafter, others will be passed over altogether. Let us walk around the city, directing our steps to objects of the greatest interest. We are in front of the Bank of England, an imposing structure, built in imitation of the Temple of Venus at Tivoli. Men in gold and scarlet question us as we pass up, and servants in buff coats, red vests, dark pants, and a bank medal attached to one of the buttons, politely conduct us through the premises. We find this pile of buildings to cover a somewhat irregular area of eight acres, built in the most secure and durable manner, and filled with officers and clerks, who are actively engaged. About one thousand men are employed as clerks, porters, and watchmen. At night, forty soldiers are on the ground,

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and every measure taken to prevent robbery. We see here men counting out bills to a vast amount, shoveling gold like pebbles, and handling money as if it were a useless thing. We pass through some sixty departments, where all the various branches of banking are performed, from the stamping of the paper to the distribution of it to the people. In the vaults below the ground, bars of gold, and checks which have been drawn, one by government to the amount (I think) of one million of pounds, are shown us, and we pass from place to place with no little wonder at the magnitude of the operation. Vast as the whole is, the most perfect order prevails. Each one knows his own business, and attends to it; and like the clock which indicates the time on sixteen different dials in as many rooms, so is all this vast human machinery moved by one man, who is at the head, and presides over all. We are told that the expense of carrying on this great banking operation is about two hundred and twenty thousand pounds annually. The whole is on a scale of grandeur and magnificence unequaled by any banking institution in the world.

We next wend our way to the British Museum, one of the finest buildings in London, as yet scarcely completed, situated in Bloomsbury. Here the visitor must spend many an hour, if he would see to any valuable purpose this wonderful collection. We pass from gallery to gallery, from hall to hall, from saloon to saloon, in our pleasing task. In one gallery we find the relics discovered by Layard at Nimroud, brought here at an immense expense; colossal heads; monuments on which unread inscriptions yet appear; idols of huge proportions and fanciful construction; chariots and horsemen. In other departments, we see splendid

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ofteriora of Erie from the tiny hummingbind to the Wh nge from the gulfinch to the peacock: ant mala, from the mouse to the elephant the walrus and the mastadon: human skeletons embedded in line stone; Egyptian remains in mast mariety; mummies some as they were brought from the land of mythology: others partly unrolled and others entirely exposed. Every age and clime have sent contributions to this great collection, and here, daily, antiquarians, artists, and scholars come to study out the mysterious lines which are written on every feature of the past. The library connected with the Museum is the largest in the world. It contains more than one million volumes, ten thousand maps, thirty thousand manuscripts, and a great variety of seals, parchments, and papers. A large part of it was given to the British nation by George IV., and is well selected, possessing great value, independent of the number of volumes. Here are the original manuscripts of Tasso, Pope's Iliad, the works of rare Ben Jonson; also letters written by Napoleon, Catharinc de' Medici, Peter the Great, Nelson, Mary of the Scots, the various kings of France, Washington, Bacon, Locke, Newton, Dryden, Addison, Franklin, Voltaire, Erasmus, Luther, Knox, Calvin, Cranmer, Latimer, Melancthon, Wolsey, Leibnitz, and others. One feels, as he gazes upon the autographs of great men, who have moved the world, some by the sword, and some by the tongue, and some by the pen, that he is communing with the buried past. His mind is borne back to other days, and he sweeps with Napolcon over the field of blood; shouts with Cromwell, "God and religion," as he rushes to the charge; stands with Luther before the diet, and pleads nobly for the great rights of conscience; or sits down and gazes over the shoulder of

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