boil it till it thickened into ten pounds. It was
especially horrible, because the art of that pot-
boiling was unknown to needy majesty. Had
it been known at court, the pot would never
have been off the fire. Who, indeed, would not
like to be taught by an alchemist how to make
such Mint sauce.

And what of the Mint? Mynet was the form
given by our forefathers, the Anglo-Saxons, to
the Latin moneta, whence our money. A Mint
they used to call a mynet smithy. And if
money be moneta, what is moneta? Moneta is
the goddess Juno. It was the name given her
in consideration of the great number of
admonitions or warnings with which she had favoured
the Romans, and, according to Cicero, in
particular consideration of one warning when, on
occasion of an earthquake in the city, a voice
was heard from her temple on the Capitoline,
crying, " Sacrifice a sow that is in the family-way!"
In the temple of that Juno Moneta,
Roman coin was produced, and thence called
also moneta. That origin of our words money
and mint was signified by representations of the
goddess Juno upon Roman medals, with the
hammer, anvil, pincers, and die that were the
implements of coining.

Our Mint is bound by law to transform into
coin any gold bullion brought to it for that
purpose if of standard fineness; but, practically, it
is the Bank of England that does nearly all the
business with the Mint in exchange of ingots
of bullion for coin. The word ingot, now
applied to the small bar of metal, was originally
the name of the mould; thus Chaucer's alchemist

———- put his ounce of copper in the crosslet,
  And on the fire aswithe he hath it set—
  And afterward in the ingot he it cast.

The German for it, is einguss, in-gush, from the
German equivalent to the Dutch ingieten, to
pour in.

Of our separate moneys the terms sovereign
and crown speak for themselves. For the
guineas, when they were first coined in sixteen
'sixty-two, the gold used was brought from
Guinea. A shilling puzzles the philologists.
The word, formerly scill and scilling, is said by
some to be derived from a Hebrew verb meaning
to weigh; by others from the Moesogothic
skula, a debtor, because therewith fines were
paid; others connect it with shield, as bearing
the shield or arms of the prince who issues it;
others derive it from the Latin solidus, a coin
of the time of the Emperors; others derive it
from the word in all Teutonic languages that
expressed a large coin stamped with a deep
cross so that it might be broken into smaller
change; German scheidemünze, Swedish skilje
mynt, Danish skille mynt. Scylan meant in our
old language to divide. As for penny, it is our
present form of an ancient word, not only
Teutonic, but also Bohemian and Magyar, which
signified money in general. Why it had that
sense, nobody knows; but in Magyar, while penz
means money, pengni means to ring. Farthing
is fourthling, originally the fourth part of any
coin. Thus there is old mention of nobles, half
nobles, and farthing nobles.

UP AND DOWN THE WORLD.

IN travelling we see a hundred things, trifles
often, which—far less from their intrinsic value
or importance than from some circumstance
associated with them, or from their addressing
themselves, we hardly know why, to some
peculiar perception in our mental organisation—
fix themselves in our memories; and years afterwards,
it may be, and without any recognised
appropriateness to the time, place, or circumstances
among which we find ourselves, shine
out, as it were, like stars in a dim sky.

In the wakefulness induced by protracted
illness, especially in that stage of it when
suffering has ceased to be acute, and to it has
succeeded the physical languor accompanied by the
bright, though wandering and desultory mental
activity that often marks the commencement of
convalescence, these visions of bygone
experiences start out with curious distinctness.

How many times, when sleep has held aloof
from all wooing, when I have heard the slow
hours strike in apparently endless succession,
have watched the white moonlight creeping like
a transparent stealthy ghost all along the wall of
my chamber, have heard the crowing of the first
awakened cock, have noted

    The casement slowly grow a glimmering square

—how often, as if to take me away from the
weary wistful time, has come some recollection
of "days that are no more:" not sadly, nor
"wild with all regret," but with a quiet brightness
and reality singularly soothing!

Now, I go back to old childish days in Ireland,
the first place from which my recollections
date. I see the rambling old house, covering,
with its dependencies, ground enough on which
to build a hamlet; erected at different periods,
in any and every style of architecture that
suited the taste or convenience of each succeeding
possessor: with great, seldom-used state
rooms; with smaller rooms in dozens; with long,
echoing passages, across which a rat would
often dart in the twilight, scuttling away into
cellars, vast as catacombs; with a kitchen that
would take in many modern six-roomed houses;
a fireplace where you might roast an ox; and
walls decorated with the fronts and antlers of
the largest deer shot on the estate for many
generations, among which, at Christmas, were
twisted holly, ivy, and laurel, and on whose
tynes were wont to perch and sing familiar
robins, seeking hospitality from the cold without.

In the sunshine lay around acres of neglected
garden, wildernesses of roses, flowering shrubs
in a thousand beautiful varieties, all blossoms
that could live perennially with scant care and
culture, and despite frequent visitations from
the inhabitants of a rabbit warren, grown so
over- populous that woods and fields swarmed