Wall, a short and crooked street, though immensely straighter than many who spend their time in it, is the great financial centre of the country, and is lined for the most part with magnificent banking-houses. On the corner ofNassau, stretching from Wall to Pine, and fronting on each, stands what was originally the Custom House, now the Sub-Treasury, a white-marble fire-proof building, ninety feet by two hundred, with a rotunda sixty feet in diameter, the dome supported by sixteen Corinthian pillars. The building occupies the site of the old Federal Hall, where President Washington was inaugurated; it is a partial imitation of the Parthenon at Athens, and cost nearly twelve hundred thousand dollars. Here the Government deposits its one hundred millions of gold, and here its great monetary transactions are made. In the basement is the pension bureau. Farther down, and on the opposite side of the street, stands what was built for the Merchants'' Exchange. It covers an entire block; its portico is supported by twelve front, four centre, and two rear Ionic columns thirty-eight feet long, four and a half in diameter, each formed from a single granite block weighing forty-five tons. The rotunda is eighty feet in diameter, and the crown of the dome, which rests on eight Corinthian columns of Italian marble, is one hundred and twenty-four feet high. It was built many years ago, by an incorporated company, and cost $1,800,000. It was purchased by the Government several years since for $1,000,000 and is now the United States Custom House. As London is England, so, in a sense, Wall street is New York, if not America. Here "Bears" and "Bulls" in sheep''s clothing meet in frequent and fierce rencounter, and alternately claw and gore each other. Beneath the frowns of the lofty spire of old Trinity, these calculating votaries of mammon play with fortunes as boys do with bubbles, and while a few rise and soar, many decline and burst. Wall street seldom contains above fifteen millions of gold outside the Sub-Treasury, but the necessary and speculative transactions in this alone amount daily to seventy millions, and on the 24th of September, 1869, amounted to several hundred millions, one broker alone purchasing to the amount of sixty millions. The gold transactions of 1869 are said to have reached thirty billions, and the aggregate business of Governments and stocks, to have also exceeded twenty billions. The rapidity with which money is counted, and vast amounts of stocks, bonds, and miscellaneous securities exchanged, is perfectly astonishing. Most of the counter-trade is performed by young men and striplings, the advanced and calculating minds spending most of their time in the private office. The most crowded and busy centres of New York appear cheap and tame, after spending an hour in Wall street.