"moral" for their writer's especial behoof, commending to Mr. Macaulay his history of the proceedings of the old clippers and coiners of gold and silver, as symbolical of the plan on which he himself deals with the materials for history out of which he has so cleverly compounded the very showy and very false volumes whose worth we have attempted to estimate at its true value.

"Till the reign of Charles the Second our coin had been struck by a process as old as the thirteenth century. Edward the First had invited hither skilful artists from Florence, which, in his time, was to London what London, in the time of William the Third, was to Moscow. During many generations, the instruments which were then introduced into our mint continued to be employed with little alteration. The metal was divided with shears, and afterwards shaped and stamped by the hammer. In these operations much was left to the hand and eye of the workman. It necessarily happened that some pieces contained a little more and some a little less than the just quantity of silver: few pieces were exactly round; and the rims were not marked. It was therefore in the course of years discovered that to clip the coin was one of the easiest and most profitable kinds of fraud. In the reign of Elizabeth it had been thought necessary to enact that the clipper should be, as the coiner had long been, liable to the penalties of high treason. The practice of paring down money, however, was far too lucrative to be so checked ; and, about the time of the Restoration, people began to observe that a large proportion of the crowns, halfcrowns, and shillings which were passing from hand to hand had undergone some slight mutilation.

That was a time fruitful of experiments and inventions in all the departments of science. A great improvement in the mode of shaping and striking the coin was suggested. A mill, which to a great extent superseded the human hand, was set up in the Tower of London. This mill was worked by horses, and would doubtless be considered by modern engineers as a rude and feeble machine. The pieces which it produced, however, were among the best in Europe. It was not easy to counterfeit them; and, as their shape was exactly circular, and their edges were inscribed with a legend, clipping was not to be apprehended. The hammered coins and the milled coins were current together. They were received without distinction in public, and consequently in private payments. The financiers of that age seem to have expected that the new money, which was excellent, would soon displace the old money, which was much impaired. Yet any man of plain understanding might have known that, when the State treats perfect coin and light coin as of equal value, the perfect coin will not drive the light coin out of circulation, but will itself be driven out. A clipped crown, on English ground, went as far in the payment of a tax or a debt as a milled crown. But the milled crown, as soon as it had been flung into the

crucible or carried across the Channel, became much more valuable than the clipped crown. It might therefore have been predicted, as confidently as any thing can be predicted which depends on the human will, that the inferior pieces would remain in the only market in which they could fetch the same price as the superior pieces, and that the superior pieces would take some form or fly to some place in which some advantage could be derived from their superiority.

The politicians of that age, however, generally overlooked these very obvious considerations. They marvelled exceedingly that every body should be so perverse as to use light money in preference to good money. In other words, they marvelled that nobody chose to pay twelve ounces of silver when ten would serve the turn. The horse in the Tower still paced his rounds. Fresh waggonloads of choice money still came forth from the mill; and still they vanished as fast as they appeared. Great masses were melted down; great masses exported; great masses hoarded; but scarcely one new piece was to be found in the till of a shop, or in the leathern bag which the farmer carried home from the cattle-fair. In the receipts and payments of the exchequer the milled money did not exceed ten shillings in a hundred pounds. A writer of that age mentions the case of a merchant who, in a sum of thirty-five pounds, received only a single halfcrown in milled silver.

The evil proceeded with constantly accelerating velocity. At length in the autumn of 1695 it could hardly be said that the country possessed, for practical purposes, any measure of the value of commodities. It was a mere chance whether what was called a shilling was really tenpence, sixpence, or a groat. The results of some experiments which were tried at that time deserve to be mentioned. The officers of the exchequer weighed fifty-seven thousand two hundred pounds of hammered money which had recently been paid in. The weight ought to have been above two hundred and twenty thousand ounces. It proved to be under one hundred and fourteen thousand ounces. Three eminent London goldsmiths were invited to send a hundred pounds each in current silver to be tried by the balance. Three hundred pounds ought to have weighed about twelve hundred ounces. The actual weight proved to be six. hundred and twenty-four ounces. The same test was applied in various parts of the kingdom. It was found that a hundred pounds, which should have weighed about four hundred ounces, did actually weigh at Bristol two hundred and forty ounces, at Cambridge two hundred and three, at Exeter one hundred and eighty, and at Oxford only one hundred and sixteen. There were, indeed, some northern districts into which the clipped money had only begun to find its way. An honest Quaker, who lived in one of these districts, recorded, in some notes which are still extant, the amazement with which, when he travelled southward, shopkeepers and innkeepers stared at the broad and heavy halfcrowns with which he paid his way. They asked whence he came, and where such money was to be found. The guinea which he purchased for twenty-two shillings

at Lancaster bore a different value at every stage of his journey. When he reached London it was worth thirty shillings, and would indeed have been worth more had not the government fixed that rate as the highest at which gold should be received in the payment of taxes.'

Short Notices.

THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, &c.

Jesus Christ the Model of the Priest. Translated by the Rev. J. L. Patterson. (Richardson.) A beautiful little book, and apparently well translated. It certainly reads well.

Drioux's Sacred History. Edited by the Right Rev. Dr. Goss. (Richardson.) Drioux's Sacred History is compiled on the plan of rewriting the whole Bible text, with a view of making it more intelligible and agreeable to children. We suspect that the more they get of the original scriptural phraseology, the more they like it. Those who differ from us will find this volume a useful manual; and it has the recommendation of the Bishop of Liverpool.

Hay's Inquiry on Salvation out of the true Church. (Richardson.) Bishop Hay holds that "invincible ignorance" in baptised Protestants is practically an impossibility. We hold a different opinion, and accordingly regret to see his inquiry republished. It assumes a knowledge of the ways of Almighty God which appears to us bordering on the presumptuous.

History of Latin Christianity, including that of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicholas V. By H. H. Milman, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's. 6 vols. (London, Murray.) This work is now complete, and though it is written with the feelings of a gentleman, with considerable appearance of fairness, and with an extensive reference to authorities, it is evidently a party work; like most Protestant religious writings, this also

"Hæc in nostros fabricata est machina muros ;"

and though the Latin hierarchy is treated with respect, as having been the rivals, the opponents, the foes, the subjugators of the great temporal despots, the object is to show how they also became, by their powerful hold on the conscience, and by their common interests in keeping mankind in slavery, the allies, the ministers, and the rulers of the same civil powers.

Dr. Milman closes his volumes with an appreciation of the prospects of Catholicity: it has ceased to be, he says, and never again can be, the exclusive, the paramount, far less the universal religion of enlightened men. "On more religious minds it will doubtless maintain its hold as a religion of authority-a religion of outward form-an objective religion, and so possessing inexhaustible powers of awakening religious emotion. As a religion of authority, as an objective religion, as an emotional religion, it may draw within its pale proselytes of congenial minds from a more vague, more subjective, more rational faith." Hence, we suppose, the Catholic Church must grow with the growth of religious feeling.

MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE.

The Fur-Hunters of the Far West: a Narrative of Adventures in the Oregon and Rocky Mountains. By Alexander Ross. 2 vols. (London, Smith, Elder and Co.) Mr. Ross, after forty-four years among the Indians, cannot be expected to have many graces of style; and a great deal of what he has to tell is deficient in interest. Tedious journals, recounting how "two men were robbed, four murdered, one drowned; how a boat was lost, and pipes were smoked," do not make very amusing reading. But if Oregon ever becomes a classical land, Mr. Ross will certainly be one of its first historians,—one of the masters in whose chronicles its origin is to be traced. In it we have the commercial history of the successive fur-companies; an account of the relations between the Indians and the white men; and several interesting particulars concerning the life and manners of the Indians.

We extract an account of a visit to an Indian camp for the purpose of purchasing horses.

"The moment we dismounted, we were surrounded, and the savages, giving two or three war-whoops and yells, drove the animals we had ridden out of our sight; this of itself was a hostile movement. We had to judge from appearances and be guided by circumstances. My first care was to try and direct their attention to something new, and to get rid of the temptation there was to dispose of my goods; so without a moment's delay I commenced a trade in horses; but every horse I bought during that and the following day, as well as those we had brought with us, were instantly driven out of sight, in the midst of yelling and jeering; nevertheless, I continued to trade while an article remained, putting the best face on things I could, and taking no notice of their conduct, as no insult or violence had as yet been offered to ourselves personally. Two days and nights had now elapsed since our arrival without food or sleep; the Indians refused us the former, our own anxiety deprived us of the latter. . . .

"The day after, I ordered one of the men to try and cook something for us. But the kettle was no sooner on the fire, than five or six spears bore off in savage triumph the contents; they even emptied out the water, and threw the kettle on one side; and this was no sooner done, than thirty or forty ill-favoured wretches fired a volley in the embers before us, which caused a cloud of smoke and ashes to ascend darkening the air around us; a strong hint not to put the kettle any more on the fire, and we took it."

The cook was just replacing his knife, when "a chief snatched it out of his hand. The man in an angry tone demanded his knife, saying to me, 'I'll have my knife from the villain, life or death.''No,' said I. The chief, seeing the man angry, threw down his robe, and grasping the knife in his fist, with the point downwards, raised his arm, making a motion in advance as if he intended using it. The crisis had now arrived. At this moment there was a dead silence. The Indians were flocking in from all quarters; a dense crowd surrounded us. Not a moment was to be lost; delay would be fatal, and nothing now seemed to remain for us but to sell our lives as dearly as possible. With this impression, grasping a pistol, I advanced a step towards the villain, with a full determination of shooting him before any of us should fall; but in the act of lifting my foot and moving my arm, a second idea flashed across my mind, admonishing me to soothe, and not provoke

the Indians, that Providence might yet make a way for us to escape. This thought saved the Indian's life, and ours too. Instead of drawing the pistol, I took a knife from my belt, and presented it to him, saying, 'Here, my friend, is a chief's knife, I give it to you; that is not a chief's knife, give it back to the man.' Fortunately, he took mine in his hand; but, still sullen and savage, he said nothing. The moment was a critical one; the chief stood thoughtful and silent; at last he handed the man his knife, and turning mine round and round for some time in his hands, turned to his people, holding up the knife in his hand, and exclaimed, 'Look, my friends, at the chief's knife.""

We have somewhat abridged the latter part of this quotation; but our readers will see that the author's adventures are deserving of the name. He seems a very truthful unimaginative writer, quite incapable of colouring a description. His portrait in the second volume would be enough to ruin a less solid book. We can only pardon "the deep damnation of his taking-off” on the ground of his long absence from civilised life.

Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon. By S. W. Baker, Esq., author of "The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon." (London, Longmans.) The author was so delighted with the sporting-experiences of which he published an account in his former volume, that he returned to Ceylon as a settler, and now describes his life and occupations in that capacity for the last eight years. His book is both valuable and amusing. He complains bitterly of the colonial government, is very sanguine as to the quantity of gold and jewels to be found in the mountainous districts, describes the produce of the country, and becomes very animated when he has to relate any sporting-adventures. We extract the following, not as a specimen of the interest of the book, but because the opinion it contains is so contrary to the usual notion.

"You cannot convince an English settler that he will be abroad for an indefinite number of years. . with his mind ever fixed upon his return, he does nothing for posterity in the colony. He rarely even plants a fruit-tree, hoping that his stay will not allow him to gather from it.

"How different is the appearance of French colonies, and how different are the feelings of the settler! The word 'adieu' once spoken, he sighs an eternal farewell to the shores of France, and settles cheerfully in a colony as his adopted country. He lays out his grounds with taste, and plants groves of exquisite fruit-trees, whose produce will, he hopes, be tasted by his children and grandchildren. Accordingly, in a French colony there is a tropical beauty in the cultivated trees and flowers which is seldom seen in our possessions. The fruits are brought to perfection, as there is the same care taken in pruning and grafting as in our gardens in England.

"A Frenchman is necessarily a better settler; every thing is arranged for permanency, from the building of a house to the cultivation of an estate. He does not distress his land for immediate profit, but from the very commencement he adopts a system of the highest cultivation."

There seems something quite ominous in the way in which the Saxon evidently feels himself to be a mere passing stranger in the East, especially as it is so different from the manner in which he has permanently established himself in the West and South.

A History of Rome to the Establishment of the Empire. By H. G. Liddell, D.D., Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. 2 vols. (London, Murray.)