552 Notes of the Month on [MAY, 



to drink a drop out of the Thames? It is itself a common sewer, dif- 

 fering from Fleet ditch, or the brick funnels that run under our streets 

 and convey the ejcctamenta from our houses, in nothing more than its being 

 the common receptacle of their united abomination. Are there no other 

 streams in the neighbourhood of London? England is perhaps the best 

 watered country in Europe ; and yet in the metropolis, where men talk 

 of fastidiousness, and where more money is lavished on luxuries than in 

 many a kingdom, the fluid most necessary to life is a degradation of 

 ditch water, a running malady, a compact of all things emetical. Why 

 will not the citizens take up the matter? half a dozen active men would 

 do more than ten boards of aldermen. Why not bring water in pipes 

 from some of the wholsesome streams of Surry or Herts ? Nothing 

 could be easier, and nothing would be more popular than any plan 

 which afforded a rational chance of supplying London with a fluid, which 

 to a great city makes all the difference between cleanliness and filth, 

 health and disease. 



Why does not some man of public research enlighten the public on the 

 proceedings at the Mint ? The whole system is as little comprehensible 

 by the uninitiated as the philosopher's stone. The cost of the Mint is 

 prodigious, the machinery is all that machinery can be ; yet we have 

 one of the ugliest coinages of any nation of Europe. A new issue of 

 coin is about to be commenced. 



" It appears, from the king's proclamation, that the new coinage will con- 

 sist of double sovereigns, to be each of the value of 40s. ; sovereigns, each of 

 20s.; and half-sovereigns, 10s. : silver crowns, half-crowns, shillings, and six- 

 pences. The double-sovereigns have for the obverse the king's effigy, with 

 the inscription " Gulielmus IIII. D. G. Britanniarum Rex. F. D. ;" and for 

 the reverse, the ensigns armorial of the United Kingdom contained in a shield, 

 encircled by the collar of the Order of the Garter, and upon the edge of the 

 piece the words " Decus et Tutamen." The crowns and half-crowns will be 

 similar. The shilling has on the reverse the words " One Shilling," placed in 

 the centre of the piece, within a wreath, having an olive-branch on one side, 

 and an oak -branch on the other ; and the sixpences have the same, except the 

 word " Sixpence," instead of the words " One Shilling." The coppers will 

 be nearly as at present." 



Now we must observe, what the master of the Mint and the people 

 about him ought to have observed before, that here is in the first in- 

 stance a considerable expense incurred in the coinage of the double 

 sovereigns, without any possible object, except the expense itself may 

 be an object, which is not impossible. We shall have in this coin one of 

 the most clumsy and useless matters of circulation that could be devised. 

 The present sovereign answers every purpose that this clumsy coin can 

 be required for, and even the single sovereign would be a much more con- 

 venient coin for circulation if it were divided, as every one knows, who 

 knows the trouble of getting change. The half-sovereign is in fact a 

 much more convenient coin. But on this clumsy coin we must have a 

 Latin inscription, as if it were intended only for the society of anti- 

 quaries, or to be laid up in cabinets, which we acknowledge would be 

 most likely its fate, except for the notorious bad taste of the British 

 coinage. Of much use it is to an English public to have the classical 

 phraseology of Gulielmus Britanniarum Rex, put in place of the 

 national language. Then too we must have the collar of the Order of the 

 Garter to incircle the national arms, of which this Order is nonsensically 



