THE

ESSAYS OF ELIA.

THE ESSAYS OF ELIA.

THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.

READER, in thy passage from the Bank-pictures of deceased governors and subwhere thou hast been receiving thy half-governors, of Queen Anne, and the two first yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty :-huge annuitant like myself)-to the Flower Pot, charts, which subsequent discoveries have to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, antiquated; dusty maps of Mexico, dim as or some other thy suburban retreat northerly, dreams, and soundings of the Bay of -didst thou never observe a melancholy- Panama! The long passages hung with looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, buckets, appended, in idle row, to walls, to the left-where Threadneedle-street abuts whose substance might defy any, short of the upon Bishopsgate ? I dare say thou hast last, conflagration:with vast ranges of often admired its magnificent portals ever cellarage under all, where dollars and piecesgaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave of-eight once lay, an unsunned heap," for court, with cloisters, and pillars, with few or Mammon to have solaced his solitary heart no traces of goers-in or comers-out-a desola- | withal,-long since dissipated, or scattered tion something like Balclutha's.*

This was once a house of trade,-a centre of busy interests. The throng of merchants was here the quick pulse of gain-and here some forms of business are still kept up, though the soul be long since fled. Here are still to be seen stately porticos; imposing staircases, offices roomy as the state apartments in palaces-deserted, or thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks; the still more sacred interiors of court and committeerooms, with venerable faces of beadles, doorkeepers-directors seated in form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend), at long worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy silver inkstands long since dry; the oaken wainscots hung with

• I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate.-OSSIAN.

into air at the blast of the breaking of that famous BUBBLE.—

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 daybooks, 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 superfotation 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!

with since. They partook of the genius of the place!

They were mostly (for the establishment did not admit of superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally (for they had not much to do) persons of a curious and speculative turn of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned before. Humourists, for they were of all descriptions; and, not having been brought together in early life (which has a tendency to assimilate the members of corporate bodies to each other), but, for the most part, placed in this house in ripe or middle age, they necessarily carried into it their separate habits and oddities, unqualified, if I may so speak, as into a common stock. Hence they formed a sort of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. Domestic retainers in a great house, kept more for show than use. Yet pleasant fellows, full of chat-and not a few among them had arrived at considerable proficiency on the German flute.

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- The cashier at that time was one Evans, a which is delightful! With what reverence Cambro-Briton. He had something of the have I paced thy great bare rooms and choleric complexion of his countrymen courts at eventide! They spoke of the past: stamped on his visage, but was a worthy -the shade of some dead accountant, with sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, visionary pen in ear, would flit by me, stiff to the last, powdered and frizzed out, in as in life. Living accounts and accountants the fashion which I remember to have seen puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But in caricatures of what were termed, in my thy great dead tomes, which scarce three young days, Maccaronies. He was the last degenerate clerks of the present day could of that race of beaux. Melancholy as a giblift from their enshrining shelves-with their cat over his counter all the forenoon, I think old fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric I see him, making up his cash (as they call interlacings their sums in triple columnia- it) with tremulous fingers, as if he feared tions, set down with formal superfluity of every one about him was a defaulter; in his ciphers-with pious sentences at the be- hypochondry ready to imagine himself one ; ginning, without which our religious ances- haunted, at least, with the idea of the possitors never ventured to open a book of busi- bility of his becoming one; his tristful ness, or bill of lading-the costly vellum visage clearing up a little over his roast neck covers of some of them almost persuading of veal at Anderton's at two (where his us that we are got into some better library,— picture still hangs, taken a little before his are very agreeable and edifying spectacles. death by desire of the master of the coffeeI can look upon these defunct dragons with house, which he had frequented for the last complacency. Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory- five-and-twenty years), but not attaining the handled pen-knives (our ancestors had every-meridian of its animation till evening brought thing on a larger scale than we have hearts on the hour of tea and visiting. The simulfor) are as good as anything from Hercutaneous sound of his well-known rap at the laneum. The pounce-boxes of our days have gone retrograde.

door with the stroke of the clock announcing
six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in the
families which this dear old bachelor glad-
dened with his presence.
forte, his glorified hour!
chirp, and expand, over a

Then was his How would he muffin !

How