life than elsewhere is this maxim true.

The language of every merchant should be, "Give us light;" increase and multiply the means of information. What is capital, energy, enterprise, sagacity, without accurate knowledge, extensive information? An ignorant merchant may happen to succeed, even in this day, but every one must see that it is a most improbable peradventure.

A single fact is worth a folio of argument, and we have one just to the point; it is this:-That one of the leading causes of the late financial crisis and panic in England was, the want of true information respecting the amount of flour and grain which this country could supply. A number of the English corn merchants proceeded upon the belief that our surplus was exhausted, when such was not the fact. They made their contracts upon that false assumption, and were ruined. There is no one subject in which the whole mercantile community have deeper interest than that of the vast modern increase of the facilities for diffusing and obtaining full and correct information on everything pertaining to trade, so that all can enjoy its advantages; and no man need hope to compete successfully with his neighbor, who shuts himself out from a participation in these facilities. The time has come when it is no longer in the power of the few to monopolize; and every day tends more and more to equalize the condition and advantages of business men, and to throw wide open to all the door to wealth, respectability, influence, and honor. Nor is there any necessity for the frequent failures in mercantile life which have distinguished the past. The young merchant who commences on the broad and sound moral basis of integrity and nice mercantile honor, and who conducts his business with intelligence and judgment, and without undue eagerness and haste to be rich, will generally meet with success, as he will certainly deserve it. It is true, this is a day of ardent competition; but it is not less true, that it is a day when manly, honorable enterprise, buckles on its armor under auspices the most cheering and hopes the most encouraging.

BRITISH MINT.

A visit to the Mint of England is thus described in a London serial :The first place that I was conducted to was the central office, where the ingots of gold are weighed when they come in from the Bank of England, or from other sources, and where a small piece is cut off each slab for the mint assayer to test the whole by. A nugget of gold may be of any shape, and is generally an irregular dead yellow lump, that looks like pale gingerbread; but an ingot of gold is a small brick. After the precious metals have been scrupulously weighed in the central office, they are sent to the melting-house down an iron tramway. All the account-books in the mint are balanced by weight; so that, even where there is so much money, there is no use made of the three columns bearing the familiar headings of £ s. d. The melting-house is an old-fashioned structure, having what I may call the gold kitchen on one side, and the silver kitchen on the other, with just such a counting house between the two. The counting-house commands a view of both melting-kitchens, that the superintendents may overlook the men at their work. Although the mint contains nearly a hundred persons resident within its walls-forming a little colony with peculiar habits, tastes, and class feelings of its own--a great many of the workpeople are drawn from the outer world. Dinner is provided for them all within the building; and, when they pass in to their day's work, between the one soldier and the two policemen at the entrance-gate, they are not allowed to depart until their labor is finished, and the books of their department are balanced, to

see that nothing is missing. If all is found right, a properly signed certificate is given to each man, and he is then permitted to go his way.

The gold kitchen and the silver kitchen are never in operation on the same day, and the first melting process that I was invited to attend was the one in the latter department. The presiding cook, well protected with leather apron, and thick coarse gloves, was driving four ingot bricks of solid silver into a thick plumbago crucible, by the aid of a crowbar. When these four pieces were closely jammed down to a level with the surface of the melting-pot, he seasoned it with a sprinkling of base coin, by way of alloy; placing the crucible in one of the circular recesses over the fiery ovens to boil. The operations in the gold kitchen are similar to this, except that they are on a much smaller scale. A crucible is there made to boil three or four ingots, worth from four to five thousand pounds sterling; and where machinery is employed in the silver kitchen, much of the work is done in the gold kitchen with long iron tongs that are held in the hand.

When the solid metal has become fluid, a revolving crane is turned over the copper, and the glowing, red-hot crucible is drawn from its fiery recess, casting its heated breath all over the apartment, and is safely landed in a rest. This rest is placed over a number of steel moulds, that are made up, when cool, like pieces of a puzzle, and which look like a large metal mouth-organ standing on end, except that the tubes there present are square in shape, and all of the same length. The crucible rest is acted upon by the presiding cook and another man, through the machinery in which it is placed, and is made to tilt up at certain stages, according to regulated degrees. When the molten metal, looking like greasy milk, has been poured out of the crucible until it has filled the first tube of the metal mouth-organ, sounding several octaves of fluid notes, like the tone of bottle emptying, the framework of moulds is moved on one stage by the same machinery, so as to bring the second tube under the mouth of the crucible, which is then tilted up another degree. This double action is repeated until the whole blinking, white-heated interior of the crucible is presented to my view, and nothing remains within it but a few lumps of red hot charcoal.

The next step is to knock asunder the framework of moulds, and take out the silver, now hardened into long dirty-white bars, and to place these bars first in a cold-water bath, and then upon a metal counter to cool. These bars are all cast according to a size which experience has taught to be exceedingly eligible for conversion into coin.

From the silver-melting process I was taken to the gold coining department, the first stage in dealing with the precious metals being, as I have before stated, the same. Passing from bars of silver to bars of gold, I entered the great rolling room, and began my first actual experience in the manufacture of a sovereign. The bars of gold, worth about twelve hundred pounds sterling, that are taken into the great rolling room, are about twenty-one inches long, one-and threeeighths of an inch broad, and one inch thick. As they lie upon the heavy truck, before they are subject to the action of the ponderous machinery in this department, they look like cakes of very bright yellow soap.

An engine of thirty-horse power sets in motion the machinery of this room, whose duty it is to flatten the bars until they come out in ribands of an eighth of an inch thick, and considerably increased in length. This process, not unlike mangling, is performed by powerful rollers, and is repeated until the ribands are reduced to the proper gauged thickness, after which they are divided and cut into the proper gauged lengths. Having undergone one or two annealings in brick ovens attached to this department, these fillets may be considered ready for another process, which takes place, after twelve hours' delay, in a place that is called the drawing room.

In this department the coarser work of the rolling room is examined and per fected. The fillets, or ribands of gold, after being subjected to another rolling process, the chief object of which has been to thin both ends, are taken to a machine called a draw-bench, where their thickness is perfectly equalized from end to end. The thin end of the golden riband is passed between two finely

polished fixed steel cylinders into the mouth of a part of the concrete machine, which is called a "dog." This dog is a small thin carriage, traveling upon wheels over a bench, under which revolves an endless chain. In length and appearance this dog is like a seal, with a round, thick head, containing two large eyes that are formed of screws, and having a short handled inverted metal mallet for a hat. Its mouth is large, and acts like a vice, and when it has gripped the thin end of the golden riband in its teeth, its tail is affixed to the endless chain, which causes it to move slowly along the bench, dragging the riband through the fixed cylinders. When the riband bas passed through its whole length, the thin end at its other extremity coming more quickly through the narrow space between the cylinders, causes it to release itself with a sudden jerk, and this motion partly raises the mallet-cap of the backing dog, which opens its broad mouth, and drops its hold of the metal badger that it has completely drawn. A workman now takes the fillet and punches out a circular piece the exact size of a sovereign, and weighs it. If the golden dump, or blank, as it is called, is heavy, the dog and the cylinders are put in requisition once more to draw the riband thinner; but, if the weight is accurate, (and perfect accuracy at this stage is indispensable,) the smooth, dull, impressionless counter, looking like the brass buttons of an Irishman's best blue coat, is transferred to another department, called the press cutting room.

The cutting room may claim the honor of being the noisiest place in the building. The finest oration, or the most melodious song that ever came from human lips, would be utterly thrown away in this department; and if any disciple of James Watt took to instructing pupils here in the mysteries of shafts, presses, and fly-wheels, it would have to be done through the medium of the deaf and dumb alphabet.

In this room twelve cutting presses, arranged on a circular platform, about two feet in height, surround an upright shaft, and a horizontal revolving flywheel; and at the will of twelve boys, who attend and feed the presses, the punches attached to the presses are made to rise and fall at the rate of a stroke a second. The ribands, cut into handy lengths, are given to the boys, who push them under the descending punches, as sliding-frames are pushed under table microscopes. The blanks fall into boxes, handily placed to receive them, and the waste-like all the slips and cuttings, trial dumps, failures, &c., in every department--is weighed back to the melting-kitchen for the next cooking day.

Vigilance, as my guide impressed upon me, is necessary at every stage of goldcoining. If the rolling be not carefully done, the draw-bench will not rectify all its errors; if the draw-bench be not nicely adjusted, the thickness of the metal riband will not be equal, and the cutting-punches, however properly turned aud tempered, would produce pieces of varying weight.

From the noise and clatter of the cutting room I was conducted to the elegant calmness of the weighing room, a department handsomely fitted up, and looking like a show-room for elaborate chronometers. Here is performed one of the most interesting and delicate operations throughout the whole mint. Upon the counter, on ornamental iron stands, is a silent council of thirteen automaton balances, who pass judgment, individually, upon the work in the foregoing departments, and decide with unerring exactness upon the weight of the golden dumps. These automaton judges sit under glass cases, to preserve them from damp and dust, and they have the appearance of being a row of French skeleton clocks. The golden dumps that are passed into the weighing room, still looking like the aforesaid Irishman's brass buttons, are distributed among the balances, passing down a receiving slide on to a strip of steel. This strip of steel is made to advance and recede at certain intervals, perhaps of a quarter of a minute, and at each advance it pushes a blank on to a beautifully poised scale-table, sensitive to the slightest variations of weight. For a few seconds the machine appears to reflect, and then the golden dump is gently pushed off the scale by the arrival of another piece on the steel slide for judgment. The first, if "heavy," disappears down the outer one of three flattened tubes; if “light,' down the inner one; and, if quite correct in weight, down the center compartment. By care

ful manipulation, much of the work is now made to fall in the medium boxes, thereby effecting much saving in the annual expenses of the mint--a reform that is attributable to the present working master and his superintendents.

From the weighing room I followed the dumps that were declared to be in perfect condition to a department called the marking room, where they received their first surface impression. This room contains eight machines, whose duty it is to raise a plain rim, or protecting edge, round the surface circumference of the golden blanks. This is done by dropping them down a tube, which conducts them horizontally to a bed prepared for them, where they are pushed backwards and forwards between two grooved" cheeks" made of steel, which raise the neces sary rim by pressure.

From this department I am taken by my guide to a long bakehouse structure, called the annealing room. Here I find several men cooks very busy with the golden-rimmed blanks, making them into pies of three thousand each, in cast-iron pans covered with wrought-iron lids, and closed up with moist Beckenham clay. These costly pies are placed in large ovens, where they are baked in intense heat for an hour, and then each batch is drawn as its time expires, and is not opened before the pans become cool. The gray plastic loam which was placed round the dish is baked to a red crisp cinder, and the golden contents of the pie are warranted not to tarnish after this fiery ordeal by coming in contact with the atmos phere.

I next follow the golden annealed blanks to the blanching room, where they are put into a cold-water bath to render them cool; after which they are washed in a hot weak solution of sulphuric acid and water, to remove all traces of surface impurity. Finally, after another wash in pure water, they are conveyed to a drying-stove, where they are first agitated violently in a heated tube, then turned into a sieve, and tossed about out of sight amongst a heap of beech wood sawdust, kept hot upon an oven. After this playful process they are sifted into the upper world once more, and then transferred to trays, like butchers' trays, which are conveyed to the stamping room.

The coining press room contains eight screw presses, worked from above by invisible machinery. Below, there is a cast-iron platform; and above, huge fly arms, full six feet long, and weighty at their ends, which travel noisily to and fro, carrying with them the vertical screw, and raising and depressing the upper die. In front of each press, when the machinery is in motion, a boy is sitting to fill the feeding-tube with the bright plain dumps of gold that have come from the sawdust in the blanching room. On the bed of the press is fixed one of Mr. WYON's head dies-a perfect work of art that is manufactured in the building; and the self-acting feeding apparatus-a slide moving backwards and forwards, much the same as in the delicate weighing machines-places the golden dumps, one by one, on the die. The boy in attendance now starts some atmospheric pressure machinery, by pulling a starting line; the press and upper die are brought down upon the piece of unstamped gold that is lying on the lower die, along with a collar that is milled on its inner circumference, and which closes upon the coin with a spring, preventing its undue expansion, and at one forcible but well-directed blow the blank dump has received its top, bottom, and side impression, and has become a perfect coin of the realm.

The feeder advances with steady regularity, and while it conveys another dump to the die, it chips the perfect sovereign down an inclined plane; the upper ma chinery comes down again; the dump is covered out of sight, to appear in an instant as a coin; other dumps advance, are stamped, are pushed away, and their places immediately taken. Some sovereigns roll on one side instead of going over to the inclined plane, others lie upon the edge of the machinery, or under the butcher's tray that holds the dumps, and the boys take even less notice of them than if they were so many peppermint drops; the heavy mass of black iron-work all over the room keeps moving steadily from ceiling to floor; a second, and all that a Dorsetshire laborer is worth in a year, is sent rolling carelessly about the platform; a dozen seconds, and all the same Dorsetshire laborer will ever earn in this world is following the treasures that went before; five minutes,

and the purchase-money is created of a landed estate; a quarter of an hour, and you may form some idea how easily fortunes are made; an hour, and any banker would give a partnership for the sweepings of the trays; a quarter of a day, and Daniel Dancer would have danced about in the madness of joy; a day, and he would have had to have been removed by the soldiers on duty at the point of the sword.

The workmen collect these different heaps of sovereigns, and brush up the scattered money, that the joint product of metal, advanced mechanism, and careful art, may pass its last examination before it is sent into the outer world for circulation as perfect, unexceptionable coin. The metal has passed no locked doorway in its progress without being weighed out of one department into another, and it undergoes yet one more weighing before it is placed into bags for delivery to the Bank of England or private bullion dealers, and consigned to a stone and iron strong-room, containing half a million of coined money, until the hour of its liberation draws nigh. As I saw the workmen tossing the precious burden about in copper scales, and taking pinches of bright new sovereigns in their hands with no more respect than if they were white-hearted cherries at twopence a pound, I could not help thinking that familiarity must breed contempt, and that the weighers will run through their property, when they come into it, with quite as much spirit as the most celebrated bloods about

town.

TOO MUCH MONEY.

Said a friend to us on a recent occasion, "I never saw but one man in my life, who acknowledged he had quite as much money as he knew how to dispose of. I had called at his house one day, when a gentleman present urged him to a scheme from which he might realize a large profit. You are right,' said he, as regards the probable success of the speculation, but I shall not embark in it; I have too much money now.' This very uncommon remark struck me most forcibly, and, after the gentleman had retired, I asked Mr. P. to explain. · Yes,' said he in reply, I would not cross the streets to gain thousands: I should be a happier man if my income were less. I am old, and in a year or two whatever I possess will avail me naught-my daughters are dead, and I have three sons upon whom I look with a father's pride. My own education had been neglected, my fortune was gained by honest labor and careful economy; I had no time for study, but I resolved that my sons should have every advantage. Each had the opportunity of gaining a fine classical education, and then 1 gave them the choice of a profession. The eldest would be a physician; the second chose the law; the third resolved to follow my footsteps as a merchant. This was very well-I was proud of my sons, and hoped that one day I might see them distinguished, or at least useful to their fellow men. I had spared no expense in their training; they had never wanted money, for I gave each a liberal allowance. Never had men fairer prospects of becoming honored and respected; but look at the result. The physician has no patients; the lawyer not a single client, and the merchant is above visiting his counting-house. In vain I urge them to be more industrious. What is the reply? There is no use in it, father-we never shall want for money; we know you have enough for all.' So look at my disappointment. Instead of being active, energetic members of society, my sons are but idlers, men of fashion and display. True, they have few vicesperhaps not so many as their associates; they have never done anything to bring disgrace upon my name; but I had expected them to add to the little reputation I may have gained. It is not the money that I care for; as my son says, I have