yearly additions to the entire stock of the
metal not been made, gold would have
become ere this as precious as the ruby.
When more people come to sit down at the
table for a wholesome game at speculation,
Mother Earth, the hostess, has to bring out
for their use more counters.

Let us have gold in round counters and silver
fish. Our hostess has provided liberally gold
and silver; but in such proportion that we find
it suitable to calculate that twenty fishes shall
be represented by a single counter. Then if, as
more people sit down to play, it suits the fancy
of the hostess to supply round counters by the
handful, instead of by the dozen, without
proportionate increase in the supply of fishes, it
will become necessary for the players to
reduce the value of the gold counter to fifteen
silver fishes, or ten. So in our game of
commerce, if the gold continues to pour in
with disproportionate rapidity, a piece of it
will come to represent the value of a smaller
quantity of silver than it now is worth.

It is a pure matter of commerce. Gold
and silver might be silk and calico. Each
bale of a certain kind of silk might be
worth, say in the year 1800, twenty bales
of a certain kind of calico. The law, adopting
silk and calico as money, might, in the
year 1800, fix their relative value according
to the estimate then true. After some
years increased facilities of silk-manufacture
might cause the same silk to be produced in
larger quantity at little cost, calico remaining
stationary in its value. So long as people
remained eager to exchange calico for silk at
the old rate, the silk-producers would of
course have no objection. This could not last
for many years; rapid supply and competition
would cause silk to fall in value with
regard to calico and other articles of
commerce. At the same time it must fall also as
a representative of wealth—as money. So it
is with gold. A piece of gold, or a piece of
silver, when coined, must very nearly represent
in value as crude metal the price of that
for which we pay. They may pass current,
perhaps, by common consent in one community
with a fictitious value; but they never could
pass out of that community; they never could
be used in foreign trade. The merchant
from abroad has to take home not bags of
make-believe, but actual equivalents for what
he brings, available for instant use all the
world over. Gold and silver would be of no
use as money if they did not put real value
into small compass, and put wealth into a
convenient, portable, and sufficiently imperishable
form. The chief use of a mint stamp is,
that it guarantees upon the faith of a nation
a certain known degree of purity in each
piece of the metal; while by the manufacture
of variety of coins, the Mint is only
anxious to cut up its metal into pieces of
convenient size.

So long, then, as the demand for gold
continues undiminished in the world, the price of
it will continue undepressed. Besides increase
in commerce and in population, it is said that
of late years, masses of treasure have been
hoarded by certain potentates, and that this
gold, like all hoarded property, passing out of
circulation, and being in effect destroyed so
long as it continues thus locked up, another
fact helps to account for the continuance of
gold at its old value, in spite of the Californian
and Australian supplies; but how long can
this value be maintained?

PRESERVATION IN DESTRUCTION.

THE reader may chance to recollect that
a few weeks ago we were rambling together
through the ruins of Pompeii, with its
silent and grass-grown streets, like those
of an English country town returning one
member. A few words on the subject of the
Museo Borbonico seem to follow as a natural
supplement to a morning spent amongst those
venerable remains. In this Museum are
preserved all the objects of antiquity that have
been turned up in the course of the excavations;
and without a visit to its treasures, it
would be all but impossible to form a correct
idea of a Roman town.

The stranger who emerges from his hotel,
as I did, on a fine January morning, and
turns his steps in the direction of the Museum,
will find in the streets many new and curious
things to arrest his attention. First and
foremost must be enumerated the beggars, a
class of society sufficiently powerful to form
an absolute Institution at Naples. Before
he has reached a distance of ten yards from
his hotel, the foreigner, but especially the
Briton, is watched, pursued, and captured.
A blind beggar in the distance catches sight
of him, while an individual, possibly with no
legs, comes up behind with the velocity of a
hawk sweeping to his prey. He finds
himself surrounded by flower-girls who thrust
nosegays into his indignant button- holes; one
succeeds in getting a full-blown rose into his
waistcoat-pocket. The cheerful circle is soon
joined by a poor wretch whose face appears
to have been eaten away in bits; the boy
who accompanies him is delivering an
animated speech on the face of the poor creature.
Like a snow-ball, he gathers as he goes on.
If he gets rid of his tormentors by distributing
grani all round, the charitable feeling which
dictated the gift is to be admired, but the
prudence of the donor must be questioned;
henceforth he is a marked man. The fat
Inglese, with blue coat and brass buttons, is
a charitable man. Good! the Inglese must
not be surprised, on opening his window of a
morning, to perceive a crowd of ragged fellows
outside, waiting to testify their gratitude.
They will follow him for half-a-mile, sooner
than that he should think them oblivious of
past favours; they will dodge him into
sequestered alleys, and burst upon him round