to the Bank involved in the compulsory purchase.
They issue their notes at once to the amount of
gold (whether in coin or bullion) in their cellars;
and they charge three-halfpence an ounce
commission to compensate them for the delay of a
week or so that takes place in the process of
coining."

"Thank you," I replied; "I feel considerably
better; and I will now examine this mechanical
process of coining."

The first place that I was conducted to was
the central office, where the ingots of gold are
weighed when they come in from the Bank of
England, or from other sources, and where a
small piece is cut off each slab for the Mint
assayer to test the whole by. A nugget of gold
may be of any shape, and is generally an
irregular dead yellow lump, that looks like pale
fingerbread; but an ingot of gold is a small
brick. After the precious metals have been
scrupulously weighed in the central office, they
are sent to the melting-house down an iron
tramway. All the account-books in the Mint
are balanced by weight; so that even where
there is so much money, there is no use made
of the three columns bearing the familiar
headings of £ s. d. The melting-house is
an old-fashioned structure, having what I
may call the gold kitchen on one side, and
the silver kitchen on the other, with just
such a counting-house between the two—well
provided with clean weights, scales, well-bound
books, and well-framed almanacks—as George
Barnwell may have worked in with his uncle
some years before he became gay. The counting-
house commands a view of both melting-
kitchens, that the superintendents may overlook
the men at their work. Although the Mint
contains nearly a hundred persons resident within
its walls—forming a little colony with peculiar
habits, tastes, and class feelings of its own—a
great many of the workpeople are drawn from
the outer world. Dinner is provided for them
all within the building; and, when they pass in
to their day's work, between the one soldier and
the two policemen at the entrance-gate, they
are not allowed to depart until their labour is
finished, and the books of their department are
balanced, to see that nothing is missing. If all
is found right, a properly signed certificate is
given to each man, and he is then permitted to
go his way.

The gold kitchen and the silver kitchen are
never in operation on the same day, and the first
melting process that I was invited to attend was
the one in the latter department. The presiding
cook, well protected with leather apron, and
thick coarse gloves, was driving four ingot-
bricks of solid silver into a thick plumbago
crucible, by the aid of a crowbar. When
these four pieces were closely jammed down to a
level with the surface of the melting-pot, he
seasoned it with a sprinkling of base coin, by
way of alloy; placing the crucible in one of the
circular recesses over the fiery ovens to boil.
The operations in the gold kitchen are similar
to this, except that they are on a much smaller
scale. A crucible is there made to boil three
or four ingots, worth from four to five thousand
pounds sterling; and where machinery is
employed in the silver kitchen, much of the work
is done in the gold kitchen with long iron tongs
that are held in the hand.

When the solid metal has become fluid, a
revolving crane is turned over the copper,
and the glowing, red-hot crucible is drawn
from its fiery recess, casting its heated breath
all over the apartment, and is safely landed
in a rest. This rest is placed over a number
of steel moulds, that are made up, when cool,
like pieces of a puzzle, and which look like
a large metal mouth-organ standing on end,
except that the tubes there present are square in
shape, and all of the same length. The crucible
rest is acted upon by the presiding cook and
another man, through the machinery in which it
is placed, and is made to tilt up at certain stages,
according to regulated degrees. "When the
molten metal, looking like greasy milk, has
poured out of the crucible until it has filled the
first tube of the metal mouth-organ, sounding
several octaves of fluid notes, like the tone of
bottle emptying, the framework of moulds is
moved on one stage by the same machinery, so
as to bring the second tube under the mouth of
the crucible, which is then tilted up another
degree. This double action is repeated until
the whole blinking, white-heated interior of the
crucible is presented to my view, and nothing
remains within it but a few lumps of red-hot
charcoal.

The next step is to knock asunder the framework
of moulds, to take out the silver, now
hardened into long dirty-white bars, and to place
these bars first in a cold-water bath, and then
upon a metal counter to cool. These bars are
all cast according to a size which experience has
taught to be exceedingly eligible for conversion
into coin.

From the silver-melting process I was taken
to the gold-coining department, the first stage
in dealing with the precious metals being, as I
have before stated, the same. Passing from bars
of silver to bars of gold, I entered the Great
Rolling Room, and began my first actual
experience in the manufacture of a sovereign.

The bars of gold, worth about twelve
hundred pounds sterling, that are taken into the
Great Rolling Room, are about twenty-one
inches long, one and three-eighths of an inch
broad, and one inch thick. As they lie upon
the heavy truck, before they are subject to the
action of the ponderous machinery in this
department, they look like cakes of very bright
yellow soap.

An engine of thirty-horse power sets in motion
the machinery of this room, whose duty it is to
flatten the bars until they come out in ribands
of an eighth of an inch thick, and considerably
increased in length. This process, not unlike
mangling, is performed by powerful rollers, and
is repeated until the ribands are reduced to the
proper gauged thickness, after which they are
divided and cut into the proper gauged lengths.