then proposed that they should talk it over some other day. The mercer left Monsieur Bonelle in the act of protesting that he felt as strong as a man of forty.

Monsieur Ramin felt in no hurry to conclude the proposed agreement. "The later one begins to pay, the better," he said, as he descended the stairs.

sitions,' as he calls them; then the priest, who gently hints that I am a dying man. Oh, what a day!"

"And did you make your will, my excellent friend?" softly asked Monsieur Ramin, with a keen look.

"Make my will?" indignantly exclaimed the old man; "make my will? what do you meau, Sir? do you mean to say I am dying?"

"Heaven forbid!" piously ejaculated Ramin. "Then why do you ask me if I have been making my will?" angrily resumed the old man. He then began to be extremely abusive.

Days passed on, and the negotiation made no way. It struck the observant tradesman that all was not right. Old Marguerite several times refused to admit him, declaring her master was asleep there was something mysterious and forbidding in her manner that seemed to Monsieur Ramin very ominous. When money was in the way, Monsieur At length a sudden thought occurred to Ramin, though otherwise of a violent temper, him: the housekeeper-wishing to become her had the meekness of a lamb. He bore the master's heir-had heard his scheme and op- treatment of his host with the meekest posed it. On the very day that he arrived at patience, and having first locked the door this conclusion, he met a lawyer, with whom so as to make sure that Marguerite would not he had formerly had some transactions, coming interrupt them, he watched Monsieur Bonelle down the staircase. The sight sent a chill attentively, and satisfied himself that the through the mercer's commercial heart, and a Excellent Opportunity he had been ardently presentiment-one of those presentiments that longing for had arrived. "He is going fast,"¦ seldom deceive-told him it was too late. He he thought; "and unless I settle the agree had, however, the fortitude to abstain from ment to-night, and get it drawn up and signed visiting Monsieur Bonelle until evening came; to-morrow, it will be too late." when he went up, resolved to see him in spite of all Marguerite might urge. The door was half-open, and the old housekeeper stood talking on the landing to a middle-aged man in a dark cassock.

"It is all over! The old witch has got the priests at him," thought Ramin, inwardly groaning at his own folly in allowing himself to be forestalled.

"You cannot see Monsieur to-night," sharply said Marguerite, as he attempted to pass her.

"Alas! is my excellent friend so very ill?" asked Ramin, in a mournful tone.

66

Sir," eagerly said the clergyman, catching him by the button of his coat, "if you are indeed the friend of that unhappy man, do seek to bring him into a more suitable frame of mind. I have seen many dying men, but never so much obstinacy, never such infatuated belief in the duration of life."

"Then you think he really is dying?" asked Ramin; and, in spite of the melancholy accent he endeavoured to assume, there was something so peculiar in his tone, that the priest looked at him very fixedly as he slowly replied,

Yes, Sir, I think he is."

"Ah!" was all Monsieur Ramin said; and as the clergyman had now relaxed his hold of the button, Ramin passed in spite of the remonstrances of Marguerite, who rushed after the priest. He found Monsieur Bonelle still in bed and in a towering rage.

"My dear friend," he at length said aloud, on perceiving that the old gentleman had fairly exhausted himself and was lying panting on his back, "you are indeed a lamentable instance of the lengths to which the greedy lust of lucre will carry our poor human nature. It is really distressing to see Marguerite, a faithful, attached servant, suddenly converted into a tormenting harpy by the prospect of a legacy! Lawyers and priests flock around you like birds of prey, drawn hither by the scent of gold! Oh, the miseries of having delicate health combined with a sound constitution and large property!"

66

Ramin," groaned the old man, looking inquiringly into his visitor's face, "you are again going to talk to me about that annuity— I know you are!"

"My excellent friend, it is merely to deliver you from a painful position.”

I

66

"I am sure, Ramin, you think in your soul am dying," whimpered Monsieur Bonelle. Absurd, my dear Sir. Dying? I will prove to you that you have never been in better health. In the first place you feel no pain." "Excepting from rheumatism," groaned

Monsieur Bonelle.

"No, it is not all," interrupted the old man with great irritability; "what would you say to the gout getting higher and higher up every day?"

"The gout is rather disagreeable, but if there is nothing else

"Oh! Ramin, my friend," he groaned, "never take a housekeeper, and never let her know you have any property. They are Yes, there is something else," sharply harpies, Ramin,-harpies! such a day as I said Monsieur Bonelle. "There is an asthma have had; first, the lawyer, who comes to that will scarcely let me breathe, and a rackwrite down my last testamentary dispo-ing pain in my head that does not allow me a

"Well, then, what do you say to three found old Marguerite, who had been listening thousand ?"

troubled with." With this Bonelle opened men," so the former is a medium of interhis door, shut it, and disappeared. communication for commercial men; and Ramin was transfixed on the stairs; surely there is no work with which so many petrified with intense disappointment, and a queries are constantly connected as the Bank powerful sense of having been duped. When Note. Nothing in existence is so assiduously he was discovered, he stared vacantly, and inquired for; nothing in nature so perseveraved about an Excellent Opportunity of ringly sought.

taking his revenge. This is not to be wondered at; for in whatThe wonderful cure was the talk of the ever light we view it, to whatever test we neighbourhood, whenever Monsieur Bonelle bring it, whether we read it backwards or appeared in the streets, jauntily flourishing forwards, from left to right, or from right to his cane. In the first frenzy of his despair, left; or whether we make it a transparency Ramin refused to pay; he accused every to prove its substantial genineness and one of having been in a plot to deceive worth, who can deny that the Bank Note is a him; he turned off Catherine and expelled most valuable work ?—a publication, in short, his porter; he publicly accused the lawyer without which no gentleman's pocket can be and priest of conspiracy; brought an action complete?

against the doctor, and lost it. He had Few can rise from a critical examination of another brought against him for violently the literary contents of this narrow sheet, assaulting Marguerite in which he was without being forcibly struck with the power, cast in heavy damages. Monsieur Bonelle combined with the exquisite fineness of the did not trouble himself with useless remon- writing. It strikes conviction at once. It strances, but, when his annuity was refused, dispels all doubts, and relieves all objections. employed such good legal arguments, as the exasperated mercer could not possibly resist. Ten years have elapsed, and MM. Ramin and Bonelle still live on. For a house which would have been dear at fifty thousand francs, the draper has already handed over seventy thousand.

The once red-faced, jovial Ramin is now a pale haggard man, of sour temper and aspect. To add to his anguish, he sees the old man thrive on that money which it breaks his heart to give. Old Marguerite takes a malicious pleasure in giving him an exact account of their good cheer, and in asking him if he does not think Monsieur looks better and better every day. Of one part of this torment Ramin might get rid, by giving his old master notice to quit, and no longer having him in his house. But this he cannot do; he has a secret fear that Bonelle would take some Excellent Opportunity of dying without his knowledge, and giving some other person an Excellent Opportunity of personating him, and receiving the money in his stead.

The last accounts of the victim of Excellent Opportunities represent him as being gradually worn down with disappointment. There seems every probability of his being the first to leave the world; for Bonelle is heartier than ever.

purpose;

There is a pithy terseness in the construction of the sentences; a downright, direct, straightforward, coming to the point, which would be wisely imitated in much of the contemporaneous literature that constantly obtains currency (though not as much). Here we have no circumlocution, no discursive pedantry, no smell of the lamp; the figures, though wholly derived from the East (being Arabic numerals), are distinct and full of and if the writing abounds in flourishes, which it does, these are not rhetorical, but boldly graphic: struck with a nervous decision of style, which, instead of obscuring the text and meaning, convinces the reader that he who traced them when promising to pay the sum of five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, one hundred, or a thousand pounds, means honestly and instantly to keep his word: that he will pay it to bearer on demand, without one moment's hesitation.

Strictly adapted for utility, yet the dulcet is not wholly overlooked; for, besides figures and flourishes, the graces of art are shed over this much-prized publication. The figure of Britannia is no slavish reproduction of any particular school whatever. She sits upon her scroll of state utterly inimitable and alone. She is hung up in one corner of the the page, sole representative of the P. R. F.P., or pre-reissue-of-the-fourpenny-piece, school. Neither, REVIEW OF A POPULAR PUBLICATION. bard, is the work wholly deficient in another if judged by the golden rule of our greatest

charm. As we have just explained, its words are few: brevity is the soul of wit. And we fearlessly put it to the keenest appreciator of good things, whether a Bank Note (say for hundred) is not the best joke conceivable except, indeed, a Bank Note for a thousand.

a

A critical analysis of a work of this importance cannot be complete without going deeply into the subject. Reviewing is, alas, too often mere surface-work; for seldom do we find the critic going below the superficies,

or extending his scrutiny beyond the letter-nor yellow-wove, nor to cream-laid, but a press. We shall, however, set a bright example white, like no other white, either in paper and of profundity, and having discharged our duty pulp. The rough fringiness of three of its to the face of the Bank Note, shall proceed edges are called the "deckeled" edges, being to penetrate below it: having analysed the the natural boundary of the pulp when first print, we shall now speak of the paper. moulded; the fourth is left smooth by the knife, which eventually cuts the two notes in twain. It is so thin that, when printed, there is much difficulty in making erasures; yet it is so strong that a "water-leaf" (a leaf before the application of size) will support thirty-six pounds; and, with the addition of one grain of size, half a hundred weight, without tearing; yet the quantity of fibre of which it consists, is no more than eighteen grains and a half.

The process of engraving the Bank Note is peculiar. Its general design is remarkably plain-steel plates are used, and are engraved in a manner somewhat analogous to that employed in the Mint for the production of the coin, except that heavy pressure is used instead of a blow. The form of the Note is divided into four or five sections, each engraved on steel dies which are hardened. Steel rollers, or mills, are obtained from these dies, and each portion of the Note is impressed on a steel plate to be printed from by the mills until the whole form is complete.

The late Mr. Cobbett, to express his idea of the intrinsic worthlessness of these sheets, in comparison with the prices at which they pass current, was wont to designate Bank Notes as "Rags." It may, indeed, be said of them that, "Rags they were, and to tinder they return;" for they are born of shreds of linen, and, ten years after death, are converted in bonfires into the finest of known tinder. It may be considered a curious fact by those who wear shirts, and a painful, because hopeless one, by those who make them, that the refuse or cuttings of linen forms, with a slight admixture of cotton, the pabulum or pulp of Bank Note Paper. Machinery has made no inroads on this branch of paper-making. The pulp is kept so well mixed in a large vat, that the fibrous material presents the appearance of a huge cauldron of milk. Into this the paper-maker dips his mould, which is a fine wire sieve, having round its edge, a slight mahogany frame, called the "Deckel," which confines the pulp to the dimensions By means of a very ingenious machine, the of the mould. This dip is quite a feat of engraving on the plates when worn by long dexterity, for on it depends the thickness printing is repaired by the same mills, and and evenness of the sheet of paper. The thus perfect identity of form is permanently water-mark, or, more properly, the wire- secured. The merits of this system are due mark, is obtained by twisting wires to the to the late Mr. Oldham, and the many imdesired form or design, and stitching them provements introduced not only into this, but on the face of the mould; therefore the design into the printing department, are the work of is above the level face of the mould, by the thickness of the wires it is composed of. Hence, the pulp in settling down on the mould, must of necessity be thinner on the wire design than on other parts of the sheet. When the water has run off through the sieve-like face of the mould, the new-born sheet of paper is transferred to a blanket; this operation is We must now review the manner of called "couching," and is effected by pressing printing. Before passing through the press, the mould gently but firmly on the blanket, all paper must be damped that it may readily when the spongy sheet clings to the cloth. absorb ink; and Bank Note paper is not exSizing is a subsequent process, and, when empt from this law; but the process by which dry, the water-mark is plainly discernible, it is complied with is an ingenious exception being, of course, transparent where the sub- to the ordinary modes. The sheets are put stance is thinnest. The paper is then made into an iron chamber which is exhausted of up into reams of five hundred sheets each, air; water is then admitted, and forces itself ready for press. The water-mark in the through every pore at the rate of thirty thounotes of the Bank of England is secured sand sheets, or double notes, per minute! to that Establishment by a special Act of Parliament. Indeed, imitation of anything whatever connected with a Bank Note is an extremely hazardous feat.

A scrupulous examination of this curious piece of paper, implants a thorough conviction that it is a very superior article-in short, unique. There is nothing like it in the world of sheets. Tested by the touch, it gives out a crisp, crackling, sharp, sounda note essentially its own-a music which resounds from no other quires. To the eye it shows a colour belonging neither to blue-wove

his son and successor, Mr. Thomas Oldham, the present chief engraver to the Bank of England. The plate-always with a pair of notes upon it-is now ready for the press; for it contains all the literary part of the work, except the date, the number, and the cashier's signature.

In a long gallery that looks like a chamber of the Inquisition with self-acting racks, stands a row of plate-printing presses worked by steam. Every time a sheet passes through them they emit a soft "click" like a ship's capstan creaking in a whisper. By this sound they announce to all whom it may concern that they have printed two Bank Notes. They are tell-tales, and keep no secrets; for, not content with stating the fact aloud, each press moves, by means of a chain, an index of numerals at the end of the room; so that the chief of the department can see at any hour of the day

1

how many
each press has printed. To take an
impression of a note plate "on the sly," is
therefore impossible. By a clever invention
of Mr. Oldham the impression returns to the
printer when made, instead of remaining on
the opposite side of the press, after it has
passed through the rollers, as of old. The
plates are heated, for inking, over steam boxes
instead of charcoal fires.

When a ream, consisting of five hundred sheets or one thousand notes, have been printed, they are placed in a tray which is inserted in a sort of shelf-trap that shuts up with a spring. No after-abstraction can, therefore, take place. One such repository is over the index appertaining to each press, and at the end of the day it can at once be seen whether the number of sheets corresponds with the numerals of the tell-tale. Any sort of mistake can thus be readily detected. The average number of "promises to pay" printed per diem is thirty thousand.

years after it has returned in fulfilment of its "promise to pay." To promise an explanation of what must appear so complicated a plan, may seem to the reader like a threat of prolixity. But he may read on in security; the system is as simple as the alphabet.

Understand then, that the dates of Bank Notes are arbitrary, and bear no reference to the day of issue. At the beginning of the official year (February) the Directors settle what dates each of the eleven denominations of Bank Notes shall bear during the ensuing twelve months, taking care to apportion to each sort of note a separate date. The table of dates is then handed to the proper officer, who prints accordingly. The five-pound Note which now rejoices our eyes is, for example, dated February the 2nd, 1850; we therefore know that there is no genuine note in existence, for any other sum, which bears that date; and if a note for ten, twenty, fifty, hundred, &c., having "2nd Feb., 1850," upon it were to be offered to us or to a Bank Clerk, we or he would, without a shadow of further evidence, impound it as a forgery.

As we cannot allow the dot over an i, or the cross of a t to escape the focus of our critical microscope, we now proceed to apply it to the Bank Ink. Like the liquid of Messrs. Day Now, as to the numbering:-It is a rule and Martin, this inestimable composition, with that of every date and denomination, one half the usual labour, produces the most hundred thousand Notes--no more and no brilliant jet-black, fully equal to the highest less-shall be completed and issued at one Japan varnish, and is warranted to keep in time. We know, therefore, that our solitary any climate. It is made from the charred five is one of a hundred thousand other fives, husks of Rhenish grapes after their juice has each bearing a different number-from 1* to been expressed and bottled for exportation to 100,000-but all dated 2nd Feb., 1850. The the dinner-tables of half the world. When numbers are printed on each Note by mixed with pure linseed oil, carefully pre- means of a letter-press, the types of which pared by boiling and burning, the vinous change with each pull of the press. For the refuse produces a species of blacks so tenacious first Note, the press is set at "00001," and that they obstinately refuse to be emancipated when that is printed, the " 1," by the mere act from the paper when once enslaved to it by of impression, retires to make room for “2,” the press. It is so intensely nigritious that, which impresses itself on the next Note, and compared with it, all other blacks are musty so on up to "100,000." The system has been browns; and pale beside it. If the word of a applied to the stamping of railway tickets. printer's devil may be taken, it is many The date, being required for the whole series, degrees darker than the streams of Erebus. is of course immovable. After this has been Can deeper praise be awarded? done, the autograph of a cashier is only requisite to render the Note worth the value inscribed on it, in gold.

While the printers are at work, manufacturing each series of Notes, the accountbook makers are getting-up a series of ledgers so exactly to correspond, that the books of themselves, without the stroke of a pen, are a record of the existence of the Note. The book in which the birth of our own especial and par ticular "Five" is registered, is legibly inscribed, "Fives, Feb. 2, 1850."

The note is, when plate-printed, two processes distant from negotiable; the first being the numbering and dating-and here we must point out the grand distinction which exists between the publication which we have the satisfaction of stating, now lies before us (but it is only a "Five") and ordinary prints. When the types for this miscellany, for instance, are once set up, every copy struck off from them by the press is precisely similar. On the contrary, of those emitted from the Bank presses no two are alike. They differ either in date, in number, or in denomination. This difference constitutes a grand system of check, extending over every stage of every Bank Note's career-a system which records its completion and issue, tracks it through its public adventures, recognises it when it returns to the Bank, from among hundreds of thousands of companions, and finally enables To prevent fraudulent additions of numerals, less than the five figures are never used. officers to pounce upon it, in case When units, tens, &c., are proper required, they are preceded by cyphers. "One" is thereof inquiry, at any official half-hour for ten fore expressed on a Bank Note thus:-"00001."

sist of a series of horizontal and perpendicular When you open a page, you find it to conlines, like the pattern of a pair of shepherd's plaid inexpressibles, variegated with columns of numerals; these figures running on regularly from No. 1, on the top of the first page, No. 100,000 at the bottom of the last. It

to