name. She stipulated, however, that present pleasure against so much Lovell should remain the ostensible future profit, has a good deal of selfish owner, and that she should continue in calculation in it; and, though Rosathe background as before. mond turns the tables on him with a practical proof of generosity, that only shows that she, like the nature that of Though so exceedingly enjoying [wrote Mrs. Edgeworth] the intercourse of all the great minds she had known, she more en-conceived her, was better than the joyed her domestic life with her nearest theory in which she had been trained. relations, when her spirits never flagged, and her wit and wisdom, which were never for show, were called forth by every little incident of the day. When my daughters were with Maria at Paris they described to me the readiness with which she would return from the company of the greatest philosophers and wits of the day to superintend her young sisters' dress, or arrange some party of pleasure for them. We often wondered what her admirers would say, after all the profound remarks and brilliant witticisms they have listened to, if they heard her delightful nonsense with us. Much as she was gratified by her "success" in the society of her celebrated contemporaries, she never varied in her love for home. There was, indeed, far more Irish impulsiveness and uncalculating warmth of affection in Miss Edgeworth than a casual reader of her books would be likely to imagine. She had enough of those qualities to give her a such admirable truth and point, the perfect right to satirize, as she did with false notions of generosity and openhandedness which landed so many of the Irish gentry of her day in hopeless and degrading poverty. The essential meanness of a lavish ostentation of hospitality or generosity, while tenants and tradesmen are ruined to sustain the reputation of "a good fellow," has never been more trenchantly exposed than by her. he She died in 1849 in the arms of her devoted stepmother and friend, after In spite of the truth and vigor of her an illness of only a few hours. Not social satire, her novels are now but long before, in speaking of her own little read a fact, we think, which is feelings during a dangerous illness, she largely owing to the want of real depth had written, "I felt ready to rise tran- and seriousness in her criticism of life. quilly from the banquet of life, where I She might―one might almost say she had been a happy guest. I confidently would have been capable of far relied on the goodness of my Creator." greater things had her father not inMiss Edgeworth remarks, in the esti- fected her with that shallow optimism mate of her father's character which on which no work of enduring greatshe affixed to his "Memoirs," on the ness can ever be based. "Virtue unsoundness of that view of human brings happiness was Mr. Edgenature which Rousseau and the Ency- worth's motto. By happiness clopædists had taught him, and from understood a comfortable home, a balwhich he never completely freed him-ance at your banker's, and an admiring self; a view which regards all wrong- circle of friends; and he argued that to doing as a mere error of judgment, show these things to be the inevitable assuming that virtue is always so much concomitants of virtue was a sure way more prudent and profitable than vice, to bring about the perfection of the that men need only be taught to look race. Consequently, in Miss Edgeat it in that light and self-interest will worth's books we know from the beinduce them to shape their conduct ginning that the Idle Apprentice will accordingly. But in her own earlier be hung and the good one marry his works there are traces of the same way master's daughter; that the liar will be of thinking. It is hard not to be on exposed, the tyrant cast down, and Godfrey's side in the last chapter of persecuted worth emerge from its tem"Rosamond," where he tells his sister porary cloud, and "live happily ever that her plan of balancing the advan- after." There is no suggestion in her tages of different actions, so much books of the haunting riddles of life, wark, and one in the Durham House, Strand, besides the one in the Tower. of the great mystery of sorrow, no than one mint in London, even as in record of those triumphs and defeats later times there was a mint in Southin the sphere of the inner life which make all mere vicissitudes of earthly fortune look paltry in comparison. We look in vain through all her volumes for any note that harmonizes with those magnificent lines of Wordsworth : Sorrow that is not sorrow, but delight, In the reign of Henry III., and probably before, the supremacy of the London mint may be said to have been recognized. In 1247, the money of that period was called in on account of the shameful condition into which it had degenerated through the prevalence of the detestable practice of clipping. The shears were so freely used that numbers of coins were shorn to the innermost ring, the border of letBut though one is apt to make mis-ters having quite disappeared. New takes if one attempts, like the friends of Job, to gauge a man's character by the measure of his worldly success, yet the history of a race or family will often present in unmistakable characters the logical outcome of racial vices are. and defects. In "Castle Rackrent" for once Miss Edgeworth got hold of a subject the tragic truth of which left no room for her didactic manipulations. The result was the only one of her writings which can challenge criticism as a work of art. From The Gentleman's Magazine. MONEY-MAKING AT THE TOWER. money was coined from fresh stamps or dies, and a proclamation was issued forbidding the use of any other stamp than that used in the London mint. Henry's son, Edward I., also made improvements in the state of the coinage. Finding the crime of clipping still very common, the Crusader's suspicions, rightly or wrongly, fell on the Jews, who consequently became convenient scapegoats; large numbers of this unfortunate people were apprehended throughout the kingdom on the same day to prevent their escape. Of these, two hundred and eighty were convicted and executed in London. This was in 1279, and eleven years later clipped and counterfeit money IT might be expected, as a matter was received at the mint by the king's of course, that the metropolitan mint order, where it was melted and rewould have a prominent part in the coined. As many as thirty furnaces annals of coinage. And, in point of were at work in London, and many in fact, while coins have been manufac-other large towns. The silver was cast tured in many towns throughout the kingdom, coining operations have been carried on in the Tower of London in every reign since the Conquest, save in those of Richard I. and Edward V. Indeed, it is highly probable that coins were first struck here in the time of the Romans. For it is known that Constantine established a mint in London, the treasurer of which bore the title Præpositus Thesaurorum Augustensium, Augusta being the name of London at that particular period. Specimens of these coins remain to this day. Under the Saxon kings, it is certain money was issued from more into long bars. These were cut by shears into square pieces of a prescribed weight, and the pieces forged as nearly as possible into a circular shape. They were then blanched white by "nealing or boiling," and stamped or impressed with a hammer. This continued to be the general mode of manufacturing coin, till the introduction of milled money in the middle of the seventeenth century. The provincia. mints seem to have had a tendency to introduce innovations upon the prescribed designs and composition of the coins; for it was specially enacted in Edward III.'s reign, pound since Anglo-Saxon times. It weighed twelve ounces of four hundred and fifty grains each, or fifty-four hundred grains. The Troy pound, weighing twelve ounces of four hundred and eighty grains each, or five thousand seven hundred and sixty grains, was substituted, and still remains in use. and repeated by many of his successors, | abolished by statute. This had been that all moneys, wherever coined, in use as the moneyers' or goldsmiths' should be made in the same manner as in the Tower of London. This monarch was the first in England to have a gold currency. Gold nobles of the value of six shillings and eightpence were struck to commemorate his great naval victory over the French at Sluys in 1340. On the obverse the king was represented standing in a ship with a sword To the undying credit of Elizabeth in his right hand and a shield in his she made a most strenuous effort to left. This was to betoken his naval reform the state of the money of this supremacy. The reverse bore the in-country. In 1560 she issued a proclascription "IHC autem transiens per mation wherein she declared to her medium illorum ibat," no doubt in subjects that she had never gained allusion to the preservation of the royal anything upon her coinages, neither person throughout the battle. The had she coined any base money, and alchymists, however, pretended that it that she was determined to recover the had reference to the secret and invis-"honor and reputation of the singuible art which they received from Ray- lar wealth that this realm was wont mond Lully, who formerly had a to have above all others." Accordlaboratory in the Tower, and by which ingly the Tower Mint was commisthey transmuted the base metals into sioned to receive base money, and in gold for the manufacture of these twelve months about three-quarters of coins. a million pounds current value were The profligate Henry VIII., though coined into money of proper weight he inherited somewhere about five mil-and standard. The fumes from meltlions from his parsimonious father, ing these base coins were so poisonous suffered much from chronic impecuni- that many of the workmen fell ill. osity, and was the first sovereign who systematically debased the fineness of the coinage to raise funds. Some of his coins are of a lower standard than any known before or since. Gold was reduced to one-sixth alloy, and silver to two-thirds alloy. No wonder the wits of that day said, in reference to the new testons, or shillings: These testons look redde: how like you the same? The medical authorities of that day prescribed a potion from a dead man's skull as a certain remedy. Accordingly an official warrant procured some of these strange cups from London Bridge, and the draught was administered. It is said to have afforded temporary relief, but many died, whether because the skulls were traitorous in death as well as in life, history does not relate. About this time, a new mode of coin 'Tis a token of grace; they blushe for ing by means of the mill and the shame. Latimer, in a sermon of his in St. Paul's, inveighed against the practice of appointing ecclesiastics to offices in the mint, and acrimoniously ascribed the deterioration of the coins to this screw-press was introduced from France by one Eloye Mestrell. The method was approved by the queen and her Council; indeed, it has been said the first milled coin was struck in the Tower by her own royal hand. However that may be, the corporation of "Should we have ministers of moneyers bitterly opposed the scheme, the Church to be comptrollers of and, the Frenchman being detected myntes ? " "The saying is that since in making milled money outside the priests have been mynters, money Tower, was summarily hanged and hath been worse than it was before!" quartered, and his machinery abandoned. cause. In 1527 the Tower pound weight was James I., a year after his coronation, | taken cum grano salis, though Briot's money is generally acknowledged to be above the average. visited the Tower preparatory to a procession through the City to open Parliament. On this occasion, William In 1643 the Tower was seized and Hubbocke delivered a Latin oration held by the Parliamentary party, and before him, which was subsequently money was coined there with the translated into English. While enu- king's name and titles. But after the merating and expatiating upon the execution of Charles I., in 1649, wonders of the Tower, he informed the the coins bore a new design. On the august Scottish stranger that "Here is obverse was a shield with the St. money coined, the joints and sinews of George's Cross between a laurel and a war, which now a good while since palm-branch and a circumscription, (sic, barely twelve months) has borne "The Commonwealth of England." the image and superscription of your On the reverse were two shields, one own Cæsar." In the same year that having the St. George's Cross for Enthe authorized version of the Bible gland, and the other a harp for Irewas issued with his sanction, it is re- land, the inscription being "God with corded that he was present as usual at us." These legends, the Cavaliers the trial of the Pix, held in the Tower, averred, were exactly typical of the and "diligently viewed the state of his true state of affairs. God and the money and mint." So that, like his Commonwealth were plainly on oppopredecessor, he seems to have mani-site sides, and out of their own mouths fested a sustained interest in the coin- the Roundheads were judged. The age of the country. He issued some double shield on the reverse afforded new twenty-shilling pieces, on which he appeared laureated and mantled, and not crowned as on the sovereign. This was made the subject of some waggery. It was said that since laurels were reckoned honorable, King James waived the crown to wear the laurel. And also that poets, being always poor, bays were rather the emblems of wit than of wealth; accordingly, no sooner did King James begin to wear laurels, than he fell two shillings in the pound in public valuation (the sovereigns being twenty-two and the new coins twenty shillings in value). infinite merriment, and was caustically A silver pair of breeches neatly wrought, To all the world the tail was uppermost. In the troubled times of Charles I. the mints were numerous. Coins are known to have been struck at fifteen places at least, besides the Tower. In In the same year, 1649, Peter Blonthis reign, Nicholas Briot, a famous deau, a Frenchman, made proposals to French engraver, and the inventor, or the Council of the Mint to coin money rather improver of new mint machin- after a method of his own, by which ery, worked here. The principle of the rim or edge might be marked or his machine was to convey the impres- inscribed, as well as the flat sides, to sion of the design to the blank discs by prevent clipping or counterfeiting. squeezing them between segments of His proposals were accepted by the cylinders on which the device was Council, but the Tower moneyers were engraved. By his means, Le Blanc enraged at his interference, and so bitsays, proud of his countryman, "the terly opposed the foreigner, that he English made the finest money in the was eventually driven out of the kingworld." This, of course, must be dom. After the Restoration, however, he was sent for again. "Blondeau will shortly come over," says Pepys, in his diary, “and then we shall have it [the quality of the money] better, and the best in the world." In 1662 a milled currency was permanently introduced, and at the same time it became the practice to mark the edge with raised letters and grainings. Small steel rolling-mills were set up in the Tower and driven by horse-power, and in some instances by water-power. The coining-presses were of the screw type, and are said to have cost £1,400. The milled money was vastly superior to the old hammered coins. Being exactly round, and lettered, or grained, on the edge, the new currency was not easily counterfeited or clipped without discovery. Yet it was soon found out that the milled pieces did not displace the hammered. Though the Tower Mint year after year issued wagonloads of new silver, to the surprise of the authorities they were rarely to be seen in circulation. The reason was a very practical one. The hammered coins were invariably shorn of a considerable proportion of silver, and It was at this time, 1663, that Simon's therefore much lighter than the new celebrated Petition Crown was pro- pieces. So that people soon found it duced. It arose out of a trial of skill was cheaper to pay a tax or a bill with between Thomas Simon, who had been crowns that had lost a shillingsworth mint engraver in the Tower since or so of silver than with full-weighted Briot's time, 1646, and Roettiers, a ones. And, on the other hand, they Flemish engraver, who was brought found it more profitable to put the new over under the patronage of King coins into the crucible or send them Charles. Both made pattern pieces over the water than to pay them over for the new coinage, but the Dutchman's work was accepted, and he accordingly received the order to make the new puncheons and dies. When Simon, with the honest indignation of an Englishman at being supplanted by a foreign competitor, expressed his displeasure at the result, his words counterfeiters were rigorously punreached the ears of the king, and he was deprived of his office of chief engraver of the coins. Simon's piece, however, has been pronounced by competent judges to be one of the finest This kind of thing grew gradually pattern coins extant. The designs on worse, till, in 1695, the state of the both obverse and reverse are excellent. currency had become highly alarming. On the edge is the artist's petition in Many coins were no more than oneraised letters. It runs thus: "Thomas quarter of the standard weight. Simon most humbly prays your Majesty Oxford a bag of coin of the nominal to compare this his tryall piece with value of a hundred pounds was put in the Dutch, and if more truly drawn and the scale, and weighed only one hunembossed, more gracefully order'd and dred and sixteen ounces instead of four more accurately engraven, to releive hundred. A clergyman preached behim." About twenty of these pieces fore some clippers, who were senwere struck off with the petition, and a tenced to be hanged next day, and, in small number without. Such master-pointing out the seriousness of their pieces are naturally now much sought offence, said, "If the same question after, and being so rare, the prices are were to be put in this day as of old, extraordinary. A firm of London coindealers at an auction sale recently gave no less than £500 for one of Simon's crowns bearing his petition. the counter. Smashers took care the supply of old pieces was kept up, and tradesmen took care the new ones did not circulate. Macaulay mentions the case of a merchant who, in a sum of £35, only received a single half-crown in milled silver. Yet clippers and ished. Seven men were hanged and a woman burned in a single morning; but the crime being so profitable, the number of criminals did not lessen. At Whose is this image and superscription ?' we could not answer the whole. We may guess at the image; but we cannot tell the superscription; for that |