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The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb - Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia
by: Charles Lamb
Categories:
Description:
Excerpt
ELIA
(From the 1st Edition, 1823)
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE
Reader, in thy passage from the BankвÐâwhere thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself)вÐâto the Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban retreat northerly,вÐâdidst thou never observe a melancholy looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to the leftвÐâwhere Threadneedle-street abuts upon Bishopsgate? I dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave court, with cloisters and pillars, with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-outвÐâa desolation something like Balclutha's.[1]
This was once a house of trade,вÐâa centre of busy interests. The throng of merchants was hereвÐâthe quick pulse of gainвÐâand 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 palacesвÐâdeserted, or thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks; the still more sacred interiors of court and committee rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door-keepersвÐâdirectors 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;вÐâthe oaken wainscots hung with pictures of deceased governors and sub-governors, of queen Anne, and the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty;вÐâhuge charts, which subsequent discoveries have antiquated;вÐâdusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams,вÐâand soundings of the Bay of Panama!вÐâThe long passages hung with buckets, appended, in idle row, to walls, whose substance might defy any, short of the last, conflagration;вÐâwith vast ranges of cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces of eight once lay, an "unsunned heap," for Mammon to have solaced his solitary heart withal,вÐâlong since dissipated, or scattered into air at the blast of the breaking of that famous BUBBLE.вÐâ
Such is the SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. At least, such it was forty years ago, when I knew it,вÐâa 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 day-books, 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 superfoetation 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....