he illustration on page 475 represents the appearance of the present
Clearing House. The business done at this establishment daily is
enormous, amounting to something like L150,000,000 each day.

"All the sovereigns," says Mr. Wills, "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 clockmaker who works by
steam. Your attention is speedily concentrated on 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. The trough thus charged is fixed slopingly
upon the machine, over a little table, as big as the plate of an
ordinary sovereign-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, receiving, 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 com