the surface, the gold was dipped into a solution
of oil of vitriol, and then turned out of its
mould in a bright yellow bar, about eight
inches long and very heavy in the hand. This
was artificially refined gold, and would be sent
to its destination at the Bank, or elsewhere,
after the due calculations had been made of
comparison with the amount of the original
material, and of its present weight and quality.
Its present weight was ascertained in the
counting-house at the before-mentioned scales.
That done, it was stamped at an adjoining
window by the punching in of certain letters
and figures, whereby it could be at all times
described and identified in invoices and
elsewhere. A piece was then cut from a corner of
an ingot, representing each batch of refined
gold, was marked and registered, and sent to
the assayer; who would return with every such
piece, a ticket, printed in a certain form, and
filled up in a brief technical way, with a
report of the nature and amount of any slight
alloy which the gold still might contain. This
statement would be delivered with the finished
gold, and would be of course an element in
the ensuing debtor and creditor account.

The workmen were, with very few exceptions,
Welshmen. Nobody seemed to know
why. They all earned high wages, and
looked handsome, portly, and jovial. There had
never been an instance, within the memory of
the firm, of any workman endeavouring to
pilfer either silver or gold. They were not
necessarily bred to the business. Some of
them had been employed at Barclay and
Perkins's before coming there; and, again,
nobody knew the process of transition from
strong beer to precious metals. Accidents
very rarely happened. Only one could be
remembered. A man upset some molten
gold in the process of casting, and severely
burnt his legs and feet; but, he was a
thorough workman and a hero, and said nothing
about it until he had finished his job; then
he mentioned, incidentally, that he thought
they had better take him to the hospital.
The wind-up of my information was, that a
gold and silver refiner's was always a ready-
money business. Heaven and earth, I should
think so!

Thus, I came out from among the treasure,
all among the dirty streets, and houses, and
waggons, and bales, and felt like the man who
found his charmed money changed into leaves.
At the corner of Wood Street, Cheapside, I
took leave of my friend known on 'Change,
and he left me once more standing under the
tree. Much as Gulliver on coming home from
Brobdignag despised the ordinary stature of
mankind, so l took a sovereign out of my waistcoat
pocket and thought it ridiculously small,
and regarded the gold watches at the jewellers'
shops over the way as in the last degree
insignificant. I am constantly thinking of the
treasure as I walk along the streets, and
repeating, " Three tons of gold a day—one
customer to the extent of a million a month
—what it will be, passes human calculation!"
If the gentle reader should at any time observe
a wayfarer of interesting appearance,
incoherently repeating those words, that wayfarer
will be the writer of the present article.

FRANCIS MOORE, PHYSICIAN.

WHATEVER may have been done by our
fathers, certainly it is not we who are
disposed to stone the prophets. Such prophets
as we have, we hear. Francis Moore,
Physician, has grown old among us, no man
hindering; Partridge has picked up corn;
Zadkiel Pao Sze has taken to himself in our
own days the prophet's mantle, and it has
kept him tolerably warm.

Moore's Almanack for many years lies now
before us, and should tell us the world's
history in whispers from the stars. The sharp
look-out kept by those little eyes that peer
over the world, enables them, of course, to
look a-head, like a bright throng of Sister
Annes, and tell the curious astrologer what
they see coming. Here, for a string of years,
is the connected chronicle of things to come;
and here, for ten years, lies behind them, in
that strict record the Annual Register, the
dogged chronicle of things that came.

That is all very stern, if we propose in a
cold way to say, here is the chaff and there
are living coals; now let us put them side by
side and make comparisons. But we cannot
look upon the face of Old Moore and be
altogether stern. Red-letter days come back
upon the memory from the red letters of his
Vox Stellarum. Who is without a picture
on his memory of some old lady who may
have been stout or thin, ugly or handsome,
great aunt or grandmother, but for whom in
his childhood he has run through Moore's
Almanack on many an errand lovingly
fulfilled! Some dear old patron clown in the
country whom it was joy to visit, whose hands
were to the little ones of her heart's love the
never-failing sources of a stream of oranges,
cakes, sixpences, rocking-horses, Robinson
Crusoes, thimbles, tops, dolls, and silver
pencil-cases; who looked forward to his
holidays as holidays to her; who planned
delightfully absurd games and laughed with
triumphing affection while he played them;
who based pic-nic parties upon Francis
Moore's opinion of the weather; who sighed
when her pet child sat upon a little stool
beside her, reading the Almanack's moralities
upon the wicked world; and, who shared all
the child's wonder at the hieroglyphic, and
his struggle to discover the interpretation of
its mysteries.

So old errors cling to us and we to them,
because they are half hallowed by association
with the memories of those who died when
we were young, in firm possession of our
freshest love and reverence. Nevertheless
they have to be put off. We are too proud, in
spite of all our sentiment, to wear upon our