The future history of this metal is explained in three sentences; it is coined at the Mint, distributed to the public, worn by friction (or “sweated” by Jews) till it becomes light. What happens to it then we shall see. By a seldom failing law of monetary attraction nearly every species of cash, “hard” or soft, metallic or paper, finds its way some time or other back to the extraordinary Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. All the sovereigns returned from the banking-houses are consigned to a secluded cellar; and, when you enter it, you will possibly fancy yourself on the premises of a clock-maker who works by steam. Your attention is speedily concentrated to a small brass box not larger than an eight-day pendule, the works of which are impelled by steam. This is a self-acting weighing machine, which with unerring precision tells which sovereigns are of standard weight, and which are light, and of its own accord separates the one from the other. Imagine a long trough or spout—half a tube that has been split into two sections—of such a semi-circumference as holds sovereigns edgeways, and of sufficient length to allow of two hundred of them to rest in that position one against another. This trough thus charged is fixed slopingly upon the machine over a little table as big as that of an ordinary sovereigns-balance. The coin nearest to the Lilliputian platform drops upon it, being pushed forward by the weight of those behind. Its own weight presses the table down; but how far down? Upon that hangs the whole merit and discriminating power of the machine. At the back, and on each side of this small table, two little hammers move by steam backwards and forwards at different elevations. If the sovereign be full weight, down sinks the table too low for the higher hammer to hit it; but the lower one strikes the edge, and off the sovereign tumbles into a receiver to the left. The table pops up again, receives, perhaps, a light sovereign, and the higher hammer having always first strike, knocks it into a receiver to the right, time enough to escape its colleague, which, when it comes forward, has nothing to hit, and returns to allow the table to be elevated again. In this way the reputation of thirty-three sovereigns is established or destroyed every minute. The light weights are taken to a clipping machine, slit at the rate of two hundred a minute, weighed in a lump, the balance of deficiency charged to the banker from whom they were received, and sent to the Mint to be re-coined. Those which have passed muster are re-issued to the public. The inventor of this beautiful little detector was Mr. Cotton, a former governor. The comparatively few sovereigns brought in by the general public are weighed in ordinary scales by the tellers. The average loss upon each light coin, on an average of thirty-five thousands taken in 1843, was twopence three farthings.