a favourite bit of Moslem scandal. The
costume of the Moorish and Jewish bride is also
the same, exoept that women of the Shreefian
family, or those descended from the Prophet,
wear green. In rich families, the wedding is
always followed by horse-races and fireworks.
The women look on closely veiled, or, more
correctly, sheeted. The bride is carried
through the streets in procession, to the
sound of music, in a sort of Punch-theatre,
placed on the back of a horse. If the procession
pass a mosque, all the persons composing
it are obliged to take off their shoes and
walk barefooted. Lastly, the Moorish bride,
on arriving at her husband's house, is lifted
over the threshold of the door, lest she should
stumble while entering, which would be a
fearful omen.

CHIPS

CHANGE FOR A SOVEREIGN.

IT is quite time, when gold is pouring in
upon us from South America and Australasia,
for all men to begin to put their hands
into their pockets, and think over the matter
of gold supply with the keen relish that is
lent by private personal concern. The whole
subject must take a prominent place during
the next year or two among the social problems
of the day.

I have, Mrs. Easiday declares, a settled
income; let me draw my dividends in peace,
and don't tease me with troublesome calculations.
—Certainly, Mrs. Easiday; but what if
there should come a day when, having drawn
your dividends, you find your house-rent,
wages, fish, flesh, and fowl all raised to what
you think a famine price; while your working-
men tell you calmly that the sovereign has
changed its value ?

Ah! Mr. Credit mutters, poor old woman,
she is to be pitied. It will be hard for the
fundholders; but, if the alteration in the
value of the sovereign is to chop the National
Debt into halves, and throw one half of it
away, why, I say, never mind a little temporary
inconvenience.—But, Mr. Credit, you are
such a respectable man, and owe nobody more
than a week's account, while my Lord Eyrope,
my Lady Stilt, and many more good customers
of yours, are in your debt, take them together,
for a good round sum—Would you like to
have each pound of it paid with a half-
sovereign?

Will it be desirable, in fact, to maintain
strict adherence to the current definition of a
piece of money, after the main part of the
definition has been falsified ? Will it be
desirable to do this for the sake of giving
indirect, unearned advantage to all debtors at
the expense of all creditors, national or private ?
and, is the English nation likely to think that
it will be desirable, because Great Britain is
a debtor on the largest scale ? Plainly, it
will be necessary, if men would be honest,
that, whenever the increased supply of gold
begins to tell upon the currency, the states of
Europe should find some method of adapting
altered symbols to unaltered truths. The
obligations entered upon ledgers are so many
facts; and £ s. d. are symbols representing
them. If the symbols fall into confusion, they
must be restored to order; we must not
confuse the facts also, to bring about a state of
harmony. If a man has his portrait painted,
to be hung up in his dining-room, and a
malicious mouse bites through the canvas and
destroys an eye, the gentleman would not be
wise in causing one of his own eyes to be put
out in order that the painting might not
cease to be a likeness. Let us adapt our
forms and methods to our duties in the world,
and not accommodate our duties to our forms.

But who knows that the sovereign, which
represents to-day one amount of assistance
furnished in return for help received, will
represent, after some time, a very much decreased
amount of temporal advantage ? Let us calculate.
At the beginning of the present century,
Europe, America, and every portion of Africa
and Asia with which we have regular
communication, taken together, could not produce
more than about a cubic yard of gold. Most
of the old gold-producing countries continue
to go on at the old rate. Change began in
Siberia. In the year 1830, Siberia, with
which we include the chain of the Ural
Mountains, began to yield more than the
average amount of gold; new fields of wealth
have been discovered, and Russia now releases,
yearly from the earth, and supplies to the
use of man, more gold than was obtained in
a year by the whole civilised world, at the
commencement of the present century.

To this increase there next came to be
added the discovery of gold in California, in
the year 1848. During the year just passed,
gold has been taken from the soil of California,
to the value of about one million eight
hundred thousand pounds; and that equals a
thirtieth part of all the gold that had been
got from the whole soil of America, between
its discovery by Columbus in 1492, and the
year of Californian gold-finding, 1848.

All this increase, however, in the quantity
of gold put into circulation in the world,
had scarcely touched the value of gold coinage.
Gold is an article of merchandise, as much
as silk or oil, and it as certainly must fall
in price when the supply of it grows faster
than the demand. Increase of population, by
which nations double themselves at no very
distant intervals of time, must form always
an important element in calculations about
social progress. Increase of population has
produced an increased number of palms
itching for gold, and the vast increase of
commerce and peaceful enterprise during the
last twenty years, by which the symbol-
money has been scattered more than heretofore
about the world, have easily absorbed
the yearly fresh supplies of gold. Had large