he brought forth four medium sized packages, and laid them on the counter before me, saying:

"Please to hold open your hand. Now, Sir, there are four packages of Bank of England notes, all ready for delivery, and in each package is one million of pounds."

I began to perspire and lose my sight and hearing. "Can there be," I said, "so much money in the world?" and then I heard him say again:

"Please to examine the packages-one two

three-four-millions."
I cried out, "stop, stop-
give me breath-do you
mean to say," said I," that
there are four million of
pounds in these four
packages-twenty million
of dollars ?"

"That is what I mean," said the polite official, and he smiled slightly at the excitement which he saw in my features.

At that moment I did not envy C. Vanderbilt, and I despised Jim Fisk. Dim thoughts of murder flashed across my

brain-and yet, no-I banished it from my mind. Twenty million of dollars! But then, the Tower! Ha-ha-away, fell design.

In one week the issue of bank notes amount to twenty-five million of pounds, or one hundred and twenty-five million of dollars. During the last twelve months the Bank has purchased three million and a half pounds' worth of gold bars, and one million eight hundred pounds' worth of silver bars. During the

MAKING SOVEREIGNS.

539

same period it sold six million pounds' worth of gold bars, and a quarter of a million pounds' worth of silver bars.

In the Weighing Office, established in 1842, to detect light gold, is the ingenious machine invented by Mr. W. Cotton, then Deputy-Governor of the Bank. About 80 or 100 light and heavy sovereigns are placed indiscriminately in a round tube; as they descend on the machinery beneath, those which are light receive a slight touch, which moves them into their proper receptacle, and those which are of legitimate weight pass into their appointed place. The light coins are then defaced by a machine, 200 in a minute; and by the weighing-machinery 35,000 may be weighed in one day. There are six of these machines, which from 1844 to 1849 weighed upwards of 48,000,000 pieces without any inaccuracy. The average amount of gold tendered in one year is nine millions, of which more than a quarter is light. The silver is put up into bags, each of one hundred pounds value, and the gold into bags of a thousand; and then these bagsful of bullion are sent through a strongly guarded door, or rather window, into the Treasury, a dark, gloomy apartment, fitted up with iron presses, supplied with huge locks and bolts.

And now I was to behold the process. After leaving the Treasury vaults, where I was shown the Bank notes, I was taken to a very large room on an upper floor, in which was a small and elegant steam engine, with other intricate machines, for weighing and defacing, or marking coins.

There was a large table with a number of coin shovels, and its entire surface was covered with sovereigns, heaped a foot high, the table having a raised rim all around it.

They were weighing these sovereigns-these officials with the finely starched shirts and white neck-tics; and this was the manner of it:

There were two open square boxes, which had connections with a number of wheels and revolving cylinders, and from each of these boxes projected the mouth of a scoop or highly polished funnel. A roll of sovereigns passed into this box, sliding slowly down through the mouth, and thence into a larger box below on the floor.

The attendants fill the tubes, and at the lower end of the scoop the work is done. Whenever a sovereign of light weight touches this spot in the lower part of the tube, a small brass plate jumps out and pushes the light sovereign into the lefthand aperture, while the full-weight pieces drop without hindrance into the right-hand box. The small brass plate does the business very quietly.

The light sovereigns are then gathered, placed in a bag, and sent back to the Mint to be re-coined. The man who was working the machine pulled a crank and a number, perhaps a thousand, of these marked sovereigns fell into the box. I took some of them in my hand, and found them almost totally defaced, and a number had been slit in two halves by the process, but no gold dust is lost the operation is performed so cleanly.

On the very same spot where once stood the Monastery of the Cistercian Monks, or Gray Friars, the Royal Mint of England is now located, and here all the money in use in England is coined by the "Company of Moneyers," as they are called. The building is situated on Tower Hill, the Mint having for a thousand years been carried on in the Tower itself.

For many hundreds of years the coinage of England had been debased by succeeding money-makers, who were entrusted by the Kings with the coinage, and in the reign of King Edward I, 280 Jews, of both sexes, were charged by this monarch with having debased the silver and gold coins, and were hung in London for the offence. King John, in 1212, ordered all the prisoners in his custody, among whom were some ecclesiastics, to be brought before him for instant judgment, at the same time summoning Cardinal Pandulph, the Papal Legate, to appear also to witness the judgment. Pandulph appeared,

and King John thinking to frighten that haughty prelate who had often humbled him, ordered a priest among the prisoners, who had counterfeited money, to be hanged.

Pandulph stepped forward and said:

"Lord King, who so dares lay finger on yon clerk, though

HENRY VIII A COUNTERFEITER.

541

he were of royal blood, him shall I excommunicate, and he shall be anathema of Holy Church."

Pandulph, who was indeed a very energetic person, left the apartment to get a candle, so that he might curse John in due form, and the King having been thoroughly frightened, delivered the priest to Pandulph to have that prelate do justice on him, but the legate immediately liberated the offender.

During the reign of the Saxon Edgar, the penny had become scarcely equal to a half-penny in weight, and St. Dunstan, who was a bishop and confessor to the King, became so outraged at the debasement of the coinage, that on Whit-Sunday he refused to celebrate the mass before the King until justice had been done on three officials, or as they were called "moneyers." They were at once taken out of the Church and had their right hands struck off by order of the King.

In those days even the gold coins were of square, longitudinal, and all sorts of irregular and uncouth shapes.

One of the prophecies of the Sage Merlin was to the effect that when the money of England should become round, the Prince of Wales would be crowned in London. Edward I, having ascertained that such a prophecy was believed among the Welsh people, caused the head of their last native Prince, Llewellyn, to be cut off and sent to the Tower in London, where it was crowned with willows in mockery of the prophecy, and since then no native Welshman has held the title of Prince of Wales, with England's consent.

Henry VIII, among his many acts of scoundrelism, was guilty of debasing the coinage of his kingdom, and when his illegitimate daughter, Queen Elizabeth, called in £638,000 of silver and gold money for the purpose of re-coining it, she ascertained on going to the Mint in person, (where she coined with her own hands several pieces of money,) that these monics, whose current value on the face had been £638,000, were then only worth in reality £244,000.

On the day that George the Third's first son and successor was born-afterwards George IV-the captured treasure of the Spanish vessel "Hermione," amounting to sixty-five tons

of silver and one bag full of gold, was carried in triumphant procession through the streets of London-amid the acclamation of the citizens-borne by twenty wagons. The value of the treasure was one million of pounds. This money was taken to the Mint to be coined.

In 1801 the English Government having determined to declare war against Spain, some private parties under the leadership of a Captain Moore, fitted out four ships to intercept some Spanish vessels on their way home from the Indies with treasure, and this infamous act of piracy was performed before the capturers of the Spanish galleons had heard of the impending declaration of war, and in fact before war was declared.

Some hundreds of persons were blown up in the Spanish Admiral's vessel, and one rich Spanish merchant who was returning on one of the vessels with his wife and daughtershaving accumulated a great fortune-lost their lives by this act of treachery.

In 1804 the ransom payable to the British Government from the Chinese Nation, amounting to sixty-five tons of silver, or two millions of Chinese dollars, the price which China had to pay for not taking her opium quietly, was brought home and transferred to the Mint to be coined.

The money paid by France to Charles II of England for the town of Dunkirk, an immense treasure, was spent by that monarch in the worst kind of debauchery, and the face of Britannia which remains to this day upon English coins, is the likeness of Miss Frances Stewart, afterward Duchess of Richmond, and at one time a mistress of this dissolute King.

Guineas, which are valued at twenty-one shillings, while the sovereign is valued at a pound or twenty shillings, were first coined from the gold brought by the African Company from Guinea, and the coins had an elephant stamped on them.

In the same reign were struck the five guinea, the two guinca piece and the half guinea pieces. The coinage of this monarch's reign, who was only fitted to be the keeper of a bagnio, was so much depreciated, that in the reign of William and Mary, when 572 bags of silver coin were called in of Charles