been promised wealth sufficient to pay all his debts in gold and silver, to the great advantage of the kingdom. The commissioners were not selected with any particular attention to their qualifications for such a scrutiny; for they consisted of Augustine and preaching friars, of the queen's physician, the master of St. Laurence Pontigny college, an alderman of London, a fishmonger, two grocers, and two mercers. Their report does not appear; but, without doubt, it was favorable to the art, as another license to practise it is found in his thirty-ninth year. This differs from those formerly granted, in being for the term of two years only, whilst the others were unlimited. Notwithstanding the disappointments which must have been perpetually experienced from the professions of those alchymists, it is certain that a reliance on the powers of their art continued as late as the seventeenth year of Edward IV. Notwithstanding the importance of the subject the mint accounts seem to have been strangely neglected, even in comparatively modern times. Our annalists could only find data in the exchequer extending from the reign of Henry III. to the eleventh of Henry VIII. respecting the supply of bullion. Latterly one great and growing corporation, the bank of England, has become the sole customer of the mint: in return. for the benefit derived from its charter that establish ment is charged with the duty of providing, except during the suspension of payments in cash, all the gold and silver used in the coinage of money.' SECT. II.-OF THE METHODS AND MACHINERY OF THE MINT COINAGE. The bullion brought into the mint has for a long period been regularly assayed, and reduced to standard an account of which is given (see our article MINT), to the parties bringing it in; and then formed into money. The first, and long-continued, mode of coinage was by the hammer; the blank piece of metal oeing placed by hand between two dies, or steel punches, containing the design of the coin, and the upper one being struck with a hammer. This operation was always imperfect, from the uncertainty of placing the dies exactly over each other; and also from the difficulty of striking a blow with such force as to make all parts of the impression equal. Hammer money, however, continued to be current until the reign of William III., when it was found in a most wretched condition from clipping and other mutilations, although the plan of coining, by the screw or press, had been introduced from France as early as 1562. But the press did not continue in use more than ten years, as being considered too expensive: there was a prejudice also against it as a foreign invention. In 1662 the use of the hammer was, however, finally relinquished: the milling upon the edges of coins was introduced about this period, and great confidence was placed in this new device, as being supposed to secure the coin both from clipping and wearing. But it was quickly discovered that the new money, both of gold and silver, could be deteriorated by a process termed sweating, or by abstracting a portion from the whole surface by an acid, which left few or no traces of its operation. The coins were also clipped and filed as before and a new milling impressed upon it, notwithstanding every effort of the mint to keep the process of milling a secret. We believe the officers concerned in this process are still sworn not to disclose it. The fly coining-press, or mill, is an invention generally ascribed to Antonie Brucher, the French king's engraver in 1553. After about thirty years use of it, in the royal mint of Paris, it was abandoned for the same alleged reason of expense that queen Elizabeth resigned it for; and remained in disuse until early in the following century, when Briot, a French engraver, induced the English government again to have recourse to this machine, and was made, in 1623, engraver to the tower mint. It seems to have been used with the hammer, and at intervals only, until the year 1662, when Charles II. introduced the last important regulations of the mint, prior to its late new constitution. At the same period he took upon the government the whole expense of the coinage of money. An extensive silver coinage in king William IIId's reign was executed at several country mints, besides the mint at the Tower. The principle of this coinage was a subject of great controversy between the celebrated Mr. Locke, Mr. Lowndes, and others. The latter proposed to regulate the coinage by the existing market price of silver; although that price (exceeding its mint price) arose from the deficiency in the weight of those coins by which silver and all other commodities were bought and sold. Mr. Locke perceived this, and contended that if the coinage were executed at a higher rate than the standard of the 46th of Elizabeth, or 5s. 2d. per ounce, it would be done at the expense of justice and integrity between the government and the people, and this noble argument prevailed. In September 1717 Sir Isaac Newton delivered in a report to the lords of the treasury, giving it as his opinion that gold was considerably overrated in the mint with respect to silver: in consequence of this the guinea was, by proclamation dated the 22d of December, 1717, declared current at 21s., which has ever since been its standard value. The price of gold now became fixed at £3. 17s. 104d. per ounce at the mint. In 1774, and subsequent years, there was a general recoinage of the gold currency; the object of which was stated to be a reformation of the light and defective coins then in circulation; £4 in fact of the gold coin then abroad would not weigh more than an ounce; and this, according to the bank accounts, was the market price. The holders of bank notes demanding new and heavy coins for them, required the bank to have a large coinage of gold to supply this demand. The coins were therefore melted, and sold in the state of bullion to the bank for £4 per ounce; to remedy which the recoinage was completed. It had the effect desired, Mr. Mushet tells us; for the price of gold, for upwards of twenty years, never exceeded, but was rather under, its mint price. A committee of the privy council ordered to take into consideration the state of the coins in 1798, being desirous to ascertain whether that loss was occasioned by any defect, either in the quality of standard gold, or in the figure or impression of the coins, requested Mr. Henry Cavendish and Mr. Hatchett to examine, by such experiments as should be deemed requisite, whether any of those defects really existed. The two following questions were principally recommended to their consideration : 1st. Whether very soft and ductile gold, or gold made as hard as is compatible with the process of coining, suffers the most by wear, under the various circumstances of friction to which coin is subjected in the course of circulation? 2d. Whether coin with a flat, smooth, and broad surface, wears less than coin which has certain protuberant parts raised above the ground or general level of the pieces?' From a set of well contrived experiments, which were extended to a considerable length, it appeared that gold of moderate ductility is best calculated for coin, and that the quality of the present standard gold is well adapted to resist abrasion, especially in the case of the friction of coin against coin; and that the wear is greater upon raised or embossed surfaces than upon those wnich are flat and plain. The wear of standard silver appeared to be nearly equal to that of fine gold; but more than that of gold made standard by silver or by copper. In the course of this year the officers of the mint repeated the experiments which they had made in the year 1787, respecting the actual wear of the silver coins, from which it appeared that a considerable loss had been occasioned by the wear of eleven years only; for it was found 27 Half crowns, 82% Shillings, 2007 Sixpences, them into a proper size. 3. The milling machine: and, 4. The coining press, properly so called. Mr. Boulton first became connected with the mint in consequence of his undertaking an extensive copper coinage for government in the year 1799. This he executed at his own works at Soho, near Birmingham: he was afterwards employed to re-stamp, without melting, a large quantity of Spanish dollars; and after the governments of France, Russia, and Denmark, as well as the East India Company, had availed themselves of his scientific apparatus, he was called upon to furnish the principal machines of the new mint, established on Tower Hill, in 1811. We may first describe the new rolling press, erected, we believe, by J. Rennie, esq. This machine is for the purpose of laminating or rolling the bars of metal, whether of gold or silver, into a proper thickness for the cutting-out mill. Those of gold are rolled cold, and can be reduced from an inch thick to the thinness of half a sovereign, without being annealed. The silver bars are rolled when heated to redness, in a reverberatory furnace. Figs. 1 and 2, plate I., MONETARY ART, are the rollers exhibited in a sectional view, and in a perspective view of one roller. U and L are the upper and lower rollers; SS the standards of a cast-iron frame in which they are fixed, by bearing brasses, regulated by the screws QQ. Each of these screws has a cog-wheel fixed on the upper end of it, turned by worms, fixed on a common axis, by the handle shown in front. This handle raises or lets fall the upper roller, but always in a parallel direction to the lower one. The standards being bolted down to the cast-iron sills, OO, the latter are embedded in the masonry beneath. The moving power of this machine is steam, and is received by the large wheel W, which moves the long shaft FF, connected by cogs were requisite to make up a pound troy, in- with the smaller wheels L and K, which turn the stead of upper roller. R, R, are sockets by which the shafts are joined, and which admit a little yielding when the roller is moved upwards. The wheels I, J, also fixed on the shaft N, turn the lower roller, being connected by an intermediate wheel applied on one side, and which operates so that the two rollers U and L, are turned in opposite directions. Fig. 2 needs little description; but it more fully exhibits the chief parts of each roller: the metal is introduced on the table T. Fig. 3 is a steel gauge, or pair of rulers, used for ascertain and the increased deficiency in the course of ing the exact thickness to which the metal is re eleven years, per cent. per cent. In the Crowns to per cent. In the Half crowns to 13 per cent. In the Shillings to 5 In the Sixpences to 3 Details of the more modern coinage do not properly belong to this paper: we proceed to observe that the old machinery in use at the mint, prior to the great alterations introduced by Mr. Boulton, were, 1. The rolling mill, for reducing the plates of metal to a proper thick2. The cutting machine, for punching ness. duced by the operation of rolling, and which is marked by the degree to which it will allow them to open upon it. The planchet, or cutting-out mill, i. e. that which cuts the metal to its right width after it comes from the rolling mill, is exhibited in plate II., fig. 1. AA is the frame work of the machine, attached to a strong sill, and connected by a wheel, W, with the shaft F of the rolling mill. C and D are two cog wheels moving the circular shears S, S, between which is conducted the rolled plate of metal at E; and G is the guide of |