tatives of the Treasury, of the Exchequer, of the Chancery, of the Mint, and of the Goldsmiths' Company. The goldsmiths are sworn to act as a jury. They witness the cutting off of two small pieces, one of gold and one of silver, from the trial pieces in the pyx-chamber; and take those cuttings into their possession. There is also opened in their presence the Mint pyx-or rather two pyxes, one filled with sample gold coin, the other with silver. The three officials produce their three keys; the two pyxes are unlocked and opened; the jury unwrap the papers in which the coins have been placed, and count and weigh all the gold and silver. These are, as we have said, representative or sample pieces; the one pyx containing one coin out of every 180 ounces of standard gold that have been struck at the Mint, and the other pyx one coin out of every 720 ounces of silver. The jury take as many pieces as they think proper, assay them with all the refinements of the goldsmith's art, and compare the standard with that of the two Exchequer trialpieces. All being right (and the Master of the Mint takes care never to be far wrong) the jury consider their verdict. Now for this verdict. The most recent trials of the pyx were in 1847, 1851, 1854, 1861, and 1866. On the last occasion there were five years' accumulations in the two pyxes or boxes, during which time there had been a hundred and sixty distinct meltings or processes of coining. The jury found in one pyx 45,482 sovereigns and 4348 half-sovereigns; in the other pyx 2936 florins, 3367 shillings, 1006 sixpences, 545 threepences, and a few specimens of the tiny Maunday money. The value of the one boxful was £47,656; of the other £494. The jury of twelve goldsmiths (headed by the well-known name of Garrard) announced in their verdict that they had melted and assayed 224 of the sovereigns and 39 of the half-sovereigns, and found the quality to agree well with the standard gold trialpiece; in like manner, that they had found the silver coins to agree with the silver trial-piece. So far good. Then as to total weight; they found that the whole of the £50,000 worth (nearly) of gold coins were so accurate as to be only half an ounce overweight altogether; while the whole of the silver coins collectively were about half an ounce underweight. The public were losers, in an infinitesimal degree, by the silver coins, but gainers in about an equal degree by those of gold-showing the perfect honesty of intention on the part of all parties concerned. The jury found that the error was far within the "remedy" or margin allowed; and gave a verdict in all respects favourable to the Master of the Mint. The Lord Chancellor pronounced this verdict in the presence of the assembled Mint, Treasury, Exchequer, and Guild officials; and then-what did they all do? They did the right and sensible thing-went to Goldsmiths' Hall, and partook of a sumptuous banquet, under the hospitable auspices of the Company. The cunning workers in gold and silver (the reader will thus see) infer that certain samples are fair representatives of the whole; and there can be no question that they are justified in this inference. The contents of the two pyx boxes (about £48,000) were samples of the whole of five years' coinages (about £36,000,000): about one in eight hundred. Then, out of this £48,000 of value in the pyx boxes, the jury melted and assayed to the value of only £250, about one in two hundred. Combining these two ratios, the quality of £250 was taken as a fair test of the quality of the whole £36,000,000. And it was fair. The buyers of corn at Mark Lane, of spices in Mincing Lane, of coals at the Coal Exchange, of cotton at Liverpool, of copper ore at Truro, of iron at Wolverhampton, all content themselves with a test by sample ; relying confidently that this sample is a fair exponent or representative of the whole bulk of the commodity sold. If it is not, woe be to the seller; he would be treated by the trade as a welcher would be treated by the ring. There is one of the numerous tests applied to the coin so very curious as to excite unfailing wonderment on the part of those who witness it for the first time. This is the ringing. After the blanks have been cut out by stamping, and weighed in Mr. Cotton's marvellous balance, they are handed over to boys, who sit in front of a large flat stone slightly inclined. Each boy takes double handfuls of blanks, and dashes them down one by one on the stone, with inconceivable rapidity. To a stranger, the ringing sound is always alike; but the sharp ear of the boy can detect the slightest difference of tone, due to bubbles of air which have become enclosed in the bars at the time of pouring the fluid metal into the mould. Such blanks are "dumb" or "cracked," and are consigned to the melting-pot; but they are very few in number. 516 in the answers to a set of questions on English History. Equally absurd errors might be adduced from the replies of university undergraduates in their various college examinations. Most people have an idea of Italy being represented by chartographers in the form of a boot; yet I remember a universityman who mapped it out as a square. Another being required to draw a map of Judea, put a big dot for Jerusalem, and a smaller one marked, "Here the man fell among thieves," and was satisfied with that exposition. "An island in the Ægean Sea," is a stock answer to any question as to the situation of a place not known. Of course, in construing Latin, greater "shots" are made; and I remember an unfortunate man asserting that clam was an adjective, accusative case, feminine; and that etsi was a verb, preter-perfect tense from etio. Two instances are given by Mr. Bristed in his Five Years in an English University, where "Cæsar captivos sub coronâ vendidit " was translated "Cæsar sold the captives for less than five shillings;" and where "Est enim finitimus oratori poeta; numeris adstrictior paullo verborum autem licentia liberior," was translated, "For a poet lived next door to the orator, too licentious in his language, but more circumspect than numbers." The man who translated yñv κal idup as "gin and water," probably did so designedly; like Porson with his "neither toddy nor tallow," and his "a liquid" in reply to the question what would he drink. The jocosely clever answers are, however, somewhat hazardous; as the Cambridge man found when he was asked by Mr. Payne, his examiner, to define happiness, and replied, "An exemption from Payne." And I knew another man who came to trouble by answering the question "What did St. Paul do at Troas and Rhegium?” “He left his cloak at Troas and fetched a compass to Rhegium." The answers to questions in Divinity papers would cover a wide field of absurdity; but so many of them (unconsciously) border on the profane, that they can only be briefly referred to here. All that one man could say of David was, that he was "a person very fond of music;" while another could tell nothing more of the most remarkable circumstance in the office of the High Priest, than that "he only washed his face once a year." Another man thought that St. Paul was "a teacher, brought up at the foot of Gamaliel, a great mountain in Cilicia;" while another gave as the substance of his sermon at Athens, that "he cried out for the space of two hours 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians.'" [Dec. 19, 1853, There are many recorded That Joseph was loved by his Arimathea : growth, cannot readily be exterminated. Those STATUTE-FAIRS, like rank weeds of foul recently held in Yorkshire-the Martinmas hirings, as they are called-were as numerously the establishment of Servants' Registration attended as usual, despite the efforts made by Societies to bring the employer and employed the contaminations that attend upon the in contact, without their being dragged through hindrance to all agricultural work, no less statutes. In Yorkshire they are a terrible As they are there held for three weeks, termithan a fruitful source of crime and immorality. nating on December 1st, and, as the open weather of the past month made it so favourable for ploughing, the absence of the farmservants for ten or twelve days at such a time, caused great hindrance and loss. But, until healthier form, it can hardly be expected that the hiring holiday is given in some other and Hodge will relinquish his bird in the hand for the uncertainty of capturing the birds in the bush. The same bad custom obtains in Scotland, where, at the Martinmas and other feeings, the hiring market is quoted as " brisk” or "dull," and dairymaids and ploughmen fair in reality is as unlike as possible to the are bought up, as at a slave sale. A statutestage representation of the same in the opera of Martha, or in Isaac Bickerstaff's Love in a Village, or in General Burgoyne's Maid of the Oaks. It is a senseless, stupid scene of drunken revelry. Sittings " " is a name locally given to the statutes in Yorkshire; and "Mop" is a very common name for them in the midland counties. The word is identical with 66 Mapp," by which name the Worcestershire hirings were called in the first quarter of the last century; and Mapp is merely an abbreviation of mappa, the title given by the Romans to their ludi circenses, and other public games, the signal to commence which was given by Nero dropping his mappa, or handkerchief. As charts were then printed on linen, the mappa also gave its name to our familiar word "map." THERE is no fair play between fighting nations as there is, such as it is, with fighting men. Explosive bullets, torpedoes, and all kinds of ingenious barbarities, seem to be legitimate articles of war. That is a clever method of spotting a vessel passing over a torpedo which the Belgian engineers have been practising on the Scheldt; but it is very cowardly. When the infernal machines are laid, a camera obscura is rigidly planted on shore, by which an image of the watery field is thrown upon a screen, also firmly fixed. The depositing vessel goes forth with her deadly cargo, and as she brings up over spot after spot to sink the machines, an attendant at the camera puts a mark on the point of his screen where the image of the ship falls at each place of deposit. Numbers are written against the marks to tally with those borne by the separate electric wires leading from each torpedo into the camera. Thus things may rest for months. When an enemy's ship approaches, the sentinel goes to the camera; he sees her tiny image cast upon the screen, and when this image comes up to or near one of the numbered dots marking a torpedo's lurking place, he connects the wires corresponding to the particular dot, and so explodes the machine immediately beneath the ship. The system has a weak point, though-it is useless at night. THE Patent Office ought to bless boobies for the revenue they bring it. It would be instructive, yet humiliating, to the boasted genius of our country, if Mr. Woodcroft would make known the proportion of patents that are obtained for inventions and proposals manifestly useless and absurd. What think you of a genius who seeks protection for a scheme for utilizing the weight of passengers or goods in carriages to propel or assist in propelling the said vehicles along rail or tramway? Doubt less this wiseacre could sit in a basket, and lift himself by the handle; his light head might help him, balloon-wise. Another talented individual patents improvements in paving streets; one among his brilliant suggestions being to form flues beneath the flagstones, leading the pipes into the sewers, that the warm air exhaled therefrom may heat the pavement, warm the feet of the passengers, and, mark the foresight of the inventor, "provide against the effects of frost and snow." These two specifications appear in one week's list. No wonder the Patent Commissioners have more money than they know what to do with. OLD chronicles and histories make frequent mention of certain darkenings of the sun, not eclipses, nor yet mere obscurations by atmospheric clouds, but strange and unaccountable diminution of the solar light, sometimes accompanied with changes of the colour of the sun's disc from its normal white to blue or red. There was the Julius Cæsar darkness, and the Crucifixion darkness; those which happened during the reigns of the Justinians, first and second; that of the year 626, when half the disc was cut off, apparently, for eight months; that of 1547, on the day of the battle of Mülhausen, about which Charles the Fifth said that the sun was always obscured when he went forth to fight; and many others. These Kepler suggested that the sun did not, as phenomena have sorely puzzled cosmicists. we should say, consume his own smoke, but became enveloped in his own soot, or else that some matter, to which he gave the name of materia cometica floated about in space, and occasionally intercepted the luminary's beams. Humboldt favoured a theory that the light-evolving process of the photosphere was disturbed or retarded for a season. Chladni and Ermau proposed rings or clouds of meteors passing between us and the sun as the obscuring cause. But the mystery was that stars were on some occasions said to have been visible, which could not have been the case if any general screening had taken place. Just now the whole question has been re-opened and thoroughly sifted by Professor Roche of Montpellier, and his examination has tended to throw discredit upon the old reporters, and to support the sun's character for perpetual lustre and immutability. Many of the alleged obfuscations he finds to be only eclipses, whereof the duration has been grossly exaggerated by excited spectators. The stars said to be visible he resolves into occasional apparitions of the planet Venus in full daylight; and the whole of the better authenticated cases of darkening he declares to be due to the occurrence of dry fogs in the regions of the earth where the obscurations were observed. But the dry fogs are mysteries. They resemble an ordinary mist, but do not affect the hygrometer, and they are, sometimes, so obstinate that wind and rain cannot dispel them. Some have asserted them to be phosphorescent. Are they smoke, or meteoric dust, or plutonic vapours, or, as bolder speculators have fancied, the tails of comets whisking the earth? These are the ideas on probation. Decision has yet to be formed. There is no fear of physicists having to cry for work; the more they do the more labour they make. THE artistic photographic compositions of Mr. H. P. Robinson are so well and widely known, that, in speaking of his most recent picture, I am merely indicating a forthcoming pleasure to those who delight in the productions of the camera when they are the outcome of refined taste and manipulative skill. The photographic picture just completed by Mr. Robinson is of large size, twenty-four by sixteen inches, and represents a Kentish landscape. A wide breadth of country is irradiated by a gleamy sun, with the threatening of a passing shower. A girl, bearing a gleaning of corn, artistically and most naturally posed and dressed, is in the centre of the foreground (a rich study of ferns and wild vegetation), and gives importance to the composition. It is a thoroughly English picture in the fullest sense of the word, and, I doubt not, will win the It is of the same popularity it deserves. size as Mr. Robinson's picture of "Sleep," published last Christmas, in which a moonlight effect was so well given. This picture, by the way, illustrated some lines in Matthew Arnold's Tristram and Iseulte. WAS it not Bishop Blomfield, who, when asked as to the nature of an archdeacon, replied that he was a person who performed archidiaconal functions?" The Chief Justice, in the Court of Queen's Bench, last November 24th, gave his own definition thus: "It seemed that the chief functions of the archdeacons were to scold the clergy." And Archdeacon Allen, in the Times for December 2nd, states that archdeacons are now expected to examine candidates for Holy Orders, to see that the fabrics of the churches are kept in repair, and to consider the matters reported on in the [Dec. 19, 1863. answers to the Articles of Inquiry issued by them from time immemorial. What would Archdeacon Grantley say to this? I SEE that the French claim to have dis covered, or, at any rate, to have defined, a new disease, to which they have given the name La Crampe des Ecrivains, or Scribblers' Cramp. But this has long been known to our own English doctors; and I who write these lines, went some eighteen months since to one of the most eminent surgeons in England, to consult him as to a certain contraction of muscles in the thumb and fore-finger of my right hand, that made me powerless to guide a pen. Said the surgeon, "You have got Writer's Cramp." I had never heard of the term; but he explained to me that it was well known, and unfortunately, too common, and that he had then under his care a clerk who wrote for lawyers, and who was totally incapacitated by Writer's Cramp, for providing for himself and a large family. The French say that their Scribblers' Cramp arises from the use of steel pens; to which, I say, with Mr. Burchell in the Vicar of Wakefield, "Fudge!” They will find that the same effect may be caused by the use of the gray goose quill. M. VICTOR HUGO has changed the title of his new story, Par Ordre du Roi, into L'Homme qui rit. It is difficult to find a good equivalent for this in English, and perhaps it will be advisable for the English translator to retain the original title, which indeed applies to three out of the four volumes of which the story consists. The story will be divided into two parts. The first, consisting of a single volume, will be published in Paris under the name of La Mer et la Nuit. The second, consisting of three volumes, will be published in Paris about a fortnight after the first volume, and will bear the name originally intended for the entire work of Par Ordre du Roi. The Authors of the articles in ONCE A WEEK reserve to themselves the right of translation. ONCE A WEEK is registered for transmission abroad. All communications relating to Advertisements should be addressed to the Publishers, Messrs. Bradbury, Evans, & Co., 11, Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, E.C. New Series EDITED BY E. S. DALLAS. No. 52. December 26, 1868. Price 2d. young fellow who stayed at the same hotel, A TALE OF THE BUSH. and slept in my room, which contained two I I. ARRIVED in Melbourne in June, 1852, at which time scenes were to be witnessed such as, I believe, were never witnessed in this world before. Not very many months had elapsed since the discovery of the Victorian Gold Fields, but these months had sufficed to crowd the harbour with noble vessels, all of which were almost entirely deserted, and to crowd the city with a colluvies of vice, of ruffianism, of horrors, beyond all that the most active imagination could have previously conceived. Every third or fourth person you met in the densely packed street was either drunk or nearly so. Every twenty or thirty yards you would meet the Tasmanian felon with his hellish scowl, and the Californian digger with his ready bowie-knife at his belt. Having lately come from home, where I had been accustomed to associate with the better class, it could hardly be expected that I should at once fathom the depth of villany contained in the breasts of those by whom I was surrounded, and I fell an easy victim. I was robbed of every penny of available money by the son of a post-captain in the British Navy, whose family and mine had been reared together. He had preceded me by a few years to Australia, and he had certainly taken a firstclass in the branch of moral philosophy to which he had restricted his studies from the time of his arrival. I may as well let the reader know one trifling fact about him, ere (as Carlyle says) he vanishes from this history at present-he was hanged in Melbourne a few years after, under a feigned name. "Sic transit fur mundi," said a Trinity College man to me, on the day of the ruffian's execution. "Off he goes, the thief of the world." While staying at the Royal Hotel, Melbourne, for a few days, waiting for an opportunity to leave for the gold-fields, I was struck by the appearance and manner of a tall VOL. II.-1868. beds. He was about six feet two, not well filled out, but with bones of enormous size; his wrist was prodigious. It was evident that he had received a superior education, and it was equally evident that he was Irish, although he had apparently associated so much with Englishmen that his accent was greatly modified. His face was like one I had seen before; but, for the life of me, I could not tell when or where. His complexion was dark; he had curly black hair, and a half-dissipated expression was in his voice, gestures, and general appearance. He told me his name was Renwick; "but," said he, with a loud laugh, "of course that is not my real name. None but a fool would give his real name here." "Why not?" said I, "unless a man has done something to disgrace his family." "My dear new chum," he replied, laughing,-"my dear unsophisticated importation, wait a few months, and you'll know why. It's all very well for a man who comes out for a good billet, or is furnished with a saddle-bag full of letters to friends; but a fellow who comes out like me-like me, my boy, with a loose foot and not a stiver, has to turn his hand to everything, and chum with men lower than the lowest fiends of hell. A nice thing for them to know the address of my people at home, isn't it? Fancy a Van-Demonian entering my mother's drawing-room, and hailing me as his mate, with a volley of curses!" He shook his black curly head, laughing as he said this. He either liked, or affected to like me, very much, and we passed most of our time together. He had been, he said, at the Bathurst diggings, where he had done well; had left them for the more prolific gullies of Victoria, had been up at Forest-hill and Bendigo, and had gained at the latter place an enormous amount of gold. At present he was down "for a spree," but would return in a few days. We went to the theatre together on many occasions, and I noticed that several very bad-looking men spoke to him now and then in a familiar way, but at NO. 52. |