depend most on such material intercourse, our weights and
measures should to us be a source of never-ending concern. And
then that question of the decimal coinage! is it not in these
days of paramount importance? Are we not disgraced by the twelve
pennies in our shilling, by the four farthings in our penny? One
of the worthy assistant-secretaries, the worthier probably of the
two, has already grown pale beneath the weight of this question.
But he has sworn within himself, with all the heroism of a
Nelson, that he will either do or die. He will destroy the
shilling or the shilling shall destroy him. In his more ardent
moods he thinks that he hears the noise of battle booming round
him, and talks to his wife of Westminster Abbey or a peerage.
Then what statistical work of the present age has shown half the
erudition contained in that essay lately published by the
secretary on _The Market Price of Coined Metals_? What other
living man could have compiled that chronological table which is
appended to it, showing the comparative value of the metallic
currency for the last three hundred years? Compile it indeed!
What other secretary or assistant-secretary belonging to any
public office of the present day, could even read it and live? It
completely silenced Mr. Muntz for a session, and even _The
Times_ was afraid to review it.

Such a state of official excellence has not, however, been
obtained without its drawbacks, at any rate in the eyes of the
unambitious tyros and unfledged novitiates of the establishment.
It is a very fine thing to be pointed out by envying fathers as a
promising clerk in the Weights and Measures, and to receive civil
speeches from mammas with marriageable daughters. But a clerk in
the Weights and Measures is soon made to understand that it is