I felt more conscious of the existence of a remote past. One
knows of this always, but the knowledge is never so living as in the
actual presence of some witness to the life of bygone ages. I felt how
short a space of human life was the period of our own existence. I was
more impressed with my own littleness, and much more inclinable to
believe that the people whose sense of the fitness of things was equal to
the upraising of so serene a handiwork, were hardly likely to be wrong in
the conclusions they might come to upon any subject. My feeling
certainly was that the currency of this bank must be the right one.
We crossed the sward and entered the building. If the outside had been
impressive the inside was even more so. It was very lofty and divided
into several parts by walls which rested upon massive pillars; the
windows were filled with stained glass descriptive of the principal
commercial incidents of the bank for many ages. In a remote part of the
building there were men and boys singing; this was the only disturbing
feature, for as the gamut was still unknown, there was no music in the
country which could be agreeable to a European ear. The singers seemed
to have derived their inspirations from the songs of birds and the
wailing of the wind, which last they tried to imitate in melancholy
cadences that at times degenerated into a howl.
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