FOOTNOTES:

IN THE ROLLING-ROOM.

Here it remains until the metal is at a molten heat, when it is lifted by means of a crane on to an apparatus shown in our illustration. This forms a pretty sight. The crucible is red-hot, and the boiling metal, as it is stirred vigorously by one of the men with an iron rod, emits a lovely bluish flame. The apparatus tilts the pot, and the metal runs into a series of moulds which move on a carriage underneath. These moulds being well oiled, the metal has no chance of becoming part of them. The bars formed in this way are twelve inches long and three-eighths of an inch thick. When removed from the moulds their edges are ragged, but a revolving file soon makes them smooth, and the bars are ready to be again assayed. A piece is chipped from one of them, and if the necessary standard of fineness has been secured, the bars pass to the next department.

This is the Rolling-room. The metal, it must be understood, is far from hard, and the reduction of the thickness and consequent increase in the length, due to the rolling of the bars, are not so difficult a matter as to the uninitiated they may seem. The bars are placed between adjustable cylinders and rolled into strips, or "fillets" as they are called.

They pass several times through the machine, being reduced the one-nineteenth part of an inch in each rolling at first, but, finally, only the one-hundredth part of an inch. Naturally the process makes the metal very hard, and it has to be annealed—that is, heated and softened—constantly until it is the right thickness. We need only state that the strips from which half-sovereigns are made must not vary more than 1-20,000th part of an inch—in other words, they must be within 1-10,000th part of an inch of the nominal thickness—togive an idea of the minute care with which every stage of the development of the coin has to be watched. Two-tenths of a grain is the divergence allowed in the weight of the sovereign, but even this margin may mean a difference of more than £3,000 on a million sovereigns.

MARKING MACHINE.

The strips, as they leave the Rolling-room, are about four feet long and double the width of the shilling. They are taken to the Cutting-room, and here for the first time we get something approaching a piece of money. The "fillets" are placed in the cutting-machines, by a man who feeds two at a time. No doubt many persons have formed the idea that the coin is cut, cucumber-fashion, from a metal rod; we have, indeed, heard people suggest as much. Well, the foregoing is sufficient to dispel any such notion. The fillet passes beneath two punches, and over holes the size of the coin. As the former descend with swift, sharp, irresistible force, they punch the "blanks" of the coin out of the strip. The blanks fall through a tube into a tray or pan, and what remains of the strips is sent back to the Melting-room, to be turned again into bars. In the case of shillings, two blanks are forced out at once. In the case of copper, five disappear at a blow, but in the case of large silver coins, only one blank is cut at a time. The blanks of the shilling are produced at the rate of some 300 an hour.

CUTTING MACHINE.

Having secured the blank, it might well be imagined that there was nothing more to be done but to impress it with the proper device on its obverse and reverse. But we are not yet more than half-way on the road to the coin which can be sent to the Bank, there to be handed over the counter to the public.

Close by the cutting-machine is what is called a marking-machine. The special function of this is to raise the edge which all coins possess for the protection of their face. The blank is run into a groove in a rapidly revolving disc, and edges are produced at the rate of between six and seven hundred an hour; in fact, almost as quickly as the man can feed the machine.

We cannot help but listen pensively for a moment to the thud, thud, of the cutting machine as the punches strike the fillet, and watch with keen interest the express rate at which the marking is accomplished. To see the blank being turned out at this pace is to make one's mouth literally water, and one's heart and pocket wish that itwere so easy and so mechanical a business to "make money" in one's daily doings. And then it strikes us: What do these men, with their usually grimy aprons and often blackened faces, get for their work in turning out so much coin of the realm? They seem to have a very good time of it on the whole, and the conditions of light, warmth, and safety under which they labour are certainly in striking contrast to the trials, the dangers, and the dreariness of the lives of those who unearth the metal.

On an average, each workman in the operative department of the Mint makes his £2 10s. a week. He enters the service of the department as a boy, and remains there through his working life, if he cares to do so and proves trustworthy. No one is accepted for employment after sixteen years of age, and every precaution is taken by the authorities against the weakness of human nature. Each room is under a separate official, without whose assistance in the unlocking of doors no employé can leave.

There is no hardship in this daily imprisonment, every department being fitted up with all conveniences for cooking, eating, &c.; and, judging from what we have seen, we should say the lives of the operatives at the Mint are not unenviable. Of one thing we can speak very positively, and that is as to their natures: their geniality is a characteristic they share in common with their chief superintendent. If one had seriously contemplated becoming an operative, they could not have taken more pains to initiate one into the mysteries of the coinage.

We now make our way to the Annealing-room. Here the scene changes entirely. The buzz, the whirr, and bang of the all powerful machinery give place to several furnaces. The blanks are brought in in bags, are emptied into an iron tray, and shoved along an elongated sort of oven, of which our illustration gives an excellent impression. It shows the man standing with the iron rod and hook in hand ready to push the tray to the farther end of the oven.

We venture modestly to suggest that the structure would do admirably for the purposes of cremation.

"Quite right, sir, it would! I suppose you wouldn't like to try it?"

We frankly and honestly confess we should not.

ANNEALING FURNACE.

After a few minutes the blanks are sufficiently baked. If one's own valuable carcase had been in that red-hot oven for ever so short a time, it would have come out charred and hardened. Not so the metal, which is considerably softened.

The blanks are now tipped into a perforated sort of basin, which is picked up by a man from another room and carried away.

We have during all this time been standing in a heat which would do credit to a Turkish bath.

But now, again, the conditions change entirely, and we are in a room filled with steam, and cold enough to refrigerate one. Here the blanks are plunged into a tank of cold water, which hisses and spits like a dozen angry snakes as the hot metal touches it. From the cooling bath the blanks go to the acid bath. Into this latter they disappear black with the oxide of copper clinging to them. Pears' Soap or Sapolio, or whatever means to cleanliness we may employ, would hardly accomplish the wonders in an hour's application to the human skin,which a few seconds of the sulphuric solution accomplishes with the blank of the coin. They emerge from their bath in every sense white as snow.

The blanks are, of course, wet, and before they can assume the full honours of the complete coin they have to be dried. How is this done? By blowing on them with a bellows? By wiping each blank separately with a cloth? By placing them in front of a fire or even in the oven again? No. They are simply emptied into a revolving box containing beech-wood sawdust. A turn about in this, and they and the sawdust are emptied into a sieve, from which the sawdust escapes with a little shaking. The sawdust is dried on a hot slab or bench, and is used again; the blanks are ready for the Press or Die room.

In the illustration of this room the man is standing with a handful of blanks feeding a small tube or shoot, from which they drop on to a sliding plate and are conveyed into a collar, as it is called. We see the piece a blank for the last time. Once in the collar, if the machinery is in motion, nothing can save that smooth-faced blank from becoming, in appearance at least, a coin of the realm. The blank rests on a die and beneath a die. The latter descends with precision and force, and the blank finds itself for an instant in a grip more powerful than miser ever gave his hoard. It would, if it could, spread itself out to the thinnest possible substance. But as it seeks to escape under the pressure its edge comes in contact with the sides of the collar. These are milled or lettered, and whatever they contain appears on the coin. It is not generally known that the object of this milling or lettering is to prevent the clipping or debasement of the money. In Queen Elizabeth's time, and on to the reign of William III.—during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—the operations of the clippers were very serious. Men made fortunes by paring a small piece from every coin in their possession, and even the death penalty failed to check the evil. A year or two before the beginning of the eighteenth century a mill, worked by horses, was started in the Tower of London to replace the old system of making money by the hand-wielded hammer. The edge of the coin was made to bear an inscription, and the operations of the clipper were rendered practically impossible. Even to-day offences in connection with the currency are numerous. In 1889 110 persons were convicted out of 194 charged with issuing counterfeit coins, having them in their possession, or actually making them. The more ingenious the device on the coin produced by the Imperial mint, the less likely is a counterfeit to pass muster for long.

DRYING BLANKS.

The coin leaves the Press-room complete, and has to pass only one other ordeal, that, namely, of the Weighing-room. Here it is placed on a wonderful automatic balance. If it is too light it falls into a drawer on one side, if correct into a drawer in the centre, if too heavy into a drawer on the other side. The average of coins which are either too heavy or too light, and consequently have to be returned to the melting pot, is, owing to the smallness of the "remedy" or margin of weight allowed, as much as 13 per cent.

There are thirty of these little machines employed, and their workmanship may be judged by the fact that each one costs £300. Bronze coins are not subjected to this severe test, but are weighed in bulk in a huge scale. Every year there is what is called "The Trial of the Pyx"—thepyx being the chest containing sample coins. A coin is taken, without preference, from every "journey weight" of gold, a "journey weight" being 15 lb. troy, or 701 sovereigns, or 1,402 half sovereigns. The work of testing is performed by a jury, composed of freemen of the Goldsmiths' Company in the presence of the Queen's Remembrancer, and the report of the jury is laid before the Treasury. The yearly verdict shows how wonderfully and uniformly accurate the standard of fineness has remained, averaging, as it did in 1889, according to the Deputy Master's Report, 916·657, the precise standard being 916·6. As regards silver, the English standard of 925 is, with the exception of certain coins, averaging 945 in the Netherlands, the highest in the world, the average in France being 835, and in Germany and the United States, 900.

COINING PRESS.

The Deputy Master's Report for 1889 was rendered especially interesting from the fact that it was the twentieth issued under the present system of Mint administration. It was only in 1870 that the Mastership of the Mint ceased to be a separate office, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer becameex officioMaster, with the Deputy Master as principal executive officer. The Mint was removed to its present site from the Tower of London in 1810. With the increase of its labours, the buildings afforded quite insufficient accommodation, and from 1871 to 1881 several Bills were introduced into the House of Commons with a view to acquiring a new site on the Thames Embankment. The governor of the Bank of England, however, having in 1881 declared that no inconvenience would arise if all gold coinage were suspended for a year, it was determined to improve the existing structure. The changes were commenced on February 1, 1882, and ended early in the following December. The result has been to place the department in a position to meet almost any demands which may be made upon it. The machinery was nearly all renewed, and the arrangements now admit of the simultaneous coinage of two metals. During July, 1889, the producing capabilities of the Mint were put to the test, and one million perfect sovereigns were struck and issued in a week. The coinage in that year of £9,746,538, to which previous reference has been made, was nearly four times the average of the previous ten years. Even this enormous sum does not represent the whole of the coinage operations of the country in 1889. A considerable portion of the Colonial coins required were turned out by a firm formerly known as Ralph Heaton & Sons, but now called "The Mint, Birmingham, Limited."[A]Messrs. Heaton were for many years a sort of Imperial Mint Auxiliary. The idea once got abroad that all bronze coins stamped with the letter "H" were counterfeit, whereas the initial simply denoted that their manufacture had been entrusted to Messrs. Heaton. The Mint, Birmingham, does most of the coinage for small foreign States which look to England to convert their ingots to money.

The Imperial Mint, in the words of so many company prospectuses, is a going concern. It levies a seigniorage which brings in a handsome revenue. This seigniorage was abolished by Charles II., but restored by an Act of George III., which required every pound of silver to be coined into 66 shillings instead of 62—the extra four shillings to go to defray the expenses of the establishment. During five out of the 18 years, 1872 to 1889, the Mint was worked at a loss; but, taking the whole 18 years, the average net profit was as muchas £83,724. The profit made in 1889 amounted to no less than £780,691 12s. 5d. What the record for 1890 will be it is too early yet to know, but 1889 will, in every respect, take a lot of beating.

The Mint does not confine itself to the production of coins, but strikes thousands of medals every year for the War Office, the Board of Trade, the University of London, the Royal and other Societies. It may be remembered that Pope addressed some admirable lines to Addisonà proposof one of his dialogues, on the historic virtues of the medal. He pictures all the glories and triumphs of the Imperial ambition of Rome shrunk into a coin. "A narrow orb each conquest keeps," he says, and he demands when Britain shall "in living medals see her wars enrolled," and "vanquished realms supply recording gold." The historian must always bear grateful testimony to the assistance derivable from the metallic tokens of a country, no matter whether they show "a small Euphrates," or merely an inscription, and the head of the sovereign. They are imperishable witnesses in the cause of accuracy and truth.

WEIGHING ROOM.

FOOTNOTES:[A]The Imperial Mint supplies the whole Empire with coinage, except Australasia, which is supplied largely by mints in Sydney and Melbourne, and India, which has mints in Calcutta and Bombay.

[A]The Imperial Mint supplies the whole Empire with coinage, except Australasia, which is supplied largely by mints in Sydney and Melbourne, and India, which has mints in Calcutta and Bombay.

From the French of Jules Claretie.

[Jules Claretiewas born at Limoges, in 1840, and is still a well-known figure in the literary world of Paris. No man is more prolific; histories, novels, articles, short stories, plays, pour without cessation from his pen. Jules Claretie is a man of the most varied gifts. His best known achievement is his "History of the Revolution," in five volumes—a monumental work. But there are those (and we confess ourselves among them) who would rather be the author of the lovely little story of child-life which we lay before our readers under the title of "Slap-Bang."]

HE little boy lay pale and listless in his small white cot, gazing, with eyes enlarged by fever, straight before him, with the strange fixity of illness which seems to see already more than is visible to living eyes. His mother, sitting at the bottom of the bed, biting her fingers to keep back a cry, noted how the symptoms deepened on the ghostly little face; while his father, a strong workman, brushed away his burning tears.

The day was breaking; a calm, clear, lovely day of June. The light began to steal into the poor apartment where little Francis, the son of Jacques and Madeline Legrand, lay very near death's door. He was seven years old; three weeks ago, a fair-haired, rosy, little boy, as happy as a bird. But one night, when he came home from school, his head was giddy and his hands were burning. Ever since he had lain there in his cot. To-night he did not wander in his mind; but for two days his strange listlessness had alarmed the doctor. He lay there sad and quiet, as if at seven years old he was already tired of life; rolling his head upon the bolster, his thin lips never smiling, his eyes staring at one knew not what. He would take nothing—neither medicine, syrup, nor beef-tea.

"Is there anything that you would like?" they asked him.

"No," he answered, "nothing."

"This must be remedied," the doctor said. "This torpor is alarming. You are his parents, and you know him best. Try to discover what will interest and amuse him." And the doctor went away.

"'THIS MUST BE REMEDIED,' THE DOCTOR SAID."

To amuse him! True, they knew him well, their little Francis. They knew how it delighted him, when he was well, to go into the fields, and to come home, loaded with white hawthorn blossoms, riding on his father's shoulders. Jacques had already bought him gilded soldiers, figures, "Chinese shadows," to be shown upon a screen. He placed them on the sick child's bed, made them dance before his eyes, and, scarcely able to keep back his tears, strove to make him laugh.

"Look, there is the Broken Bridge. Tra-la-la! And there is a general. You saw one once at Boulogne Wood, don't you remember? If you drink your medicinelike a good boy, I will buy you a real one, with a cloth tunic and gold epaulettes. Would you like to have a general?"

"No," said the sick child, his voice dry with fever.

"Would you like a pistol and bullets, or a crossbow?"

"No," replied the little voice, decisively.

And so it was with everything—even with balloons and jumping-jacks. Still, while the parents looked at each other in despair, the little voice responded, "No! No! No!"

"But what is there you would like, then, darling?" said his mother. "Come, whisper to me—to mamma." And she laid her cheek beside him on the pillow.

The sick boy raised himself in bed, and, throwing out his eager hands towards some unseen object, cried out, as in command and in entreaty, "I wantSlap-bang!"

"Slap-bang!"

The poor mother looked at her husband with a frightened glance. What was the little fellow saying? Was the terrible delirium coming back again? "Slap-bang!" She knew not what that signified. She was frightened at the strangeness of the words, which now the sick boy, with the perversity of illness—as if, having screwed his courage up to put his dream in words, he was resolved to speak of nothing else—repeated without ceasing:—

"Slap-bang! I want Slap-bang!"

"What does he mean?" she said, distractedly, grasping her husband's hand. "Oh, he is lost!"

But Jacques' rough face wore a smile of wonder and relief, like that of one condemned to death who sees a chance of liberty.

Slap-bang! He remembered well the morning of Whit-Monday, when he had taken Francis to the circus. He could hear still the child's delighted laughter, when the clown—the beautiful clown, all be-starred with golden spangles, and with a huge many-coloured butterfly glittering on the back of his black costume—skipped across the track, tripped up the riding-master by the heels, took a walk upon his hands, or threw up to the gas-light the soft felt caps, which he dexterously caught upon his skull, where, one by one, they formed a pyramid; while at every trick and every jest, his large droll face expanding with a smile, he uttered the same catch-word, sometimes to a roll of music from the band, "Slap-bang!" And every time he uttered it the audience roared and the little fellow shouted with delight.

Slap-bang! It was this Slap-bang, the circus clown, he who kept half the city laughing, whom little Francis wished to see, and whom, alas! he could not see as he lay pale and feeble in his little bed.

That night Jacques brought the child a jointed clown, ablaze with spangles, which he had bought at a high price. Four days' wages would not pay for it; but he would willingly have given the price of a year's labour, could he have brought a smile to the thin lips of the sick boy.

The child looked for a moment at the toy which sparkled on the bed-quilt. Then he said, sadly, "That is not Slap-bang. I want to see Slap-bang!"

If only Jacques could have wrapped him in the bed-clothes, borne him to the circus, shown him the clown dancing under the blazing gas-lights, and said, "Look there!"

But Jacques did better still. He went to the circus, obtained the clown's address, and then, with legs tottering with nervousness and agitation, climbed slowly up the stairs which led to the great man's apartment. It was a bold task to undertake! Yet actors, after all, go sometimes to recite or sing at rich men's houses. Who knew but that the clown, at any price he liked, would consent to go to say good-day to little Francis? If so, what matter his reception?

But wasthisSlap-bang, this charming person, called Monsieur Moreno, who received him in his study like a doctor, in the midst of books and pictures, and all the luxury of art! Jacques looked at him, and could not recognise the clown. He turned and twisted his felt hat between his fingers. The other waited. At last the poor fellow began to stammer out excuses: "It was unpardonable—a thing unheard of—that he had come to ask; but the fact was, it was about his little boy—such a pretty little boy, sir! and so clever! Always first in his class—except in arithmetic, which he did not understand. A dreamy little chap—too dreamy—as you may see"—Jacques stopped and stammered; then screwing up his courage he continued with a rush—"as you may see by the fact that he wants to see you, that he thinks of nothing else, that you are before him always, like a star which he has set his mind on——"

Jacques stopped. Great beads stood on his forehead and his face was very pale. He dared not look at the clown, whose eyes were fixed upon him. What had he daredto ask the great Slap-bang? What if the latter took him for a madman, and showed him to the door?

"Where do you live?" demanded Slap-bang.

"Oh! close by. The Rue des Abbesses!"

"Come!" said the other; "the little fellow wants to see Slap-bang—well, heshallsee him."

When the door opened before the clown, Jacques cried out joyfully, "Cheer up, Francis! Here is Slap-bang."

The child's face beamed with expectation. He raised himself upon his mother's arm, and turned his head towards the two men as they entered. Who was the gentleman in an overcoat beside his father, who smiled good-naturedly, but whom he did not know? "Slap-bang," they told him. It was all in vain. His head fell slowly back upon the pillow, and his great sad blue eyes seemed to look out again beyond the narrow chamber walls, in search, unceasing search, of the spangles and the butterfly of the Slap-bang of his dreams.

"No," he said, in a voice which sounded inconsolable; "no;thisis not Slap-bang!"

The clown, standing by the little bed, looked gravely down upon the child with a regard of infinite kind-heartedness. He shook his head, and looking at the anxious father and the mother in her agony, said smiling, "He is right. This is not Slap-bang." And he left the room.

"I shall not see him; I shall never him again," said the child, softly.

But all at once—half an hour had not elapsed since the clown had disappeared—the door was sharply opened, and behold, in his black spangled tunic, the yellow tuft upon his head, the golden butterfly upon his breast and back, a large smile opening his mouth like a money-box, his face white with flour, Slap-bang, the true Slap-bang, the Slap-bang of the circus, burst into view. And in his little white cot, with the joy of life in his eyes, laughing, crying, happy, saved, the little fellow clapped his feeble hands, and, with the recovered gaiety of seven years old, cried out:

"BRAVO, SLAP-BANG!"

"Bravo! Bravo, Slap-bang! It is he this time! This is Slap-bang! Long live Slap-bang! Bravo!"

When the doctor called that day, he found, sitting beside the little patient's pillow, a white-faced clown, who kept him in a constant ripple of laughter, and who was observing, as he stirred a lump of sugar at the bottom of a glass of cooling drink:

"You know, Francis, if you do not drink your medicine, you will never see Slap-bang again."

And the child drank up the draught.

"Is it not good?"

"Very good. Thank you, Slap-bang."

"THANK YOU, SLAP-BANG."

"Doctor," said the clown to the physician, "do not be jealous, but it seems to me that my tomfooleries have done more good than your prescriptions."

The poor parents were both crying; but this time it was with joy.

From that time till little Francis was on foot again, a carriage pulled up every day before the lodging of the workman in the Rue des Abbesses; a man descended, wrapped in a greatcoat with the collar turned up to his ears, and underneath arrayed as for the circus, with his gay visage white with flour.

"What do I owe you, sir?" said Jacques to the good clown, on the day when Francis left the house for the first time. "For I really owe you everything!"

The clown extended to the parents his two hands, huge as those of Hercules:

"A shake of the hand," he said. Then, kissing the little boy on both his rosy cheeks, he added, laughing, "And permission to inscribe on my visiting-cards, 'Slap-bang, doctor-acrobat, physician in ordinary to little Francis!'"

AGE 4.From a Miniature.

AGE 36.From a Painting by G. Richmond, R.A.

Born 1808.

AGE 81.From a Photo by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.

HENRY EDWARD MANNING, at the age of four, had his portrait taken by a miniature-painter, who depicted him upon a cliff above the sea, absorbed in listening to the murmur of a shell. This most interesting picture of the future Cardinal, together with companion portraits of his little brothers and sisters, long hung upon the wall of the library of his father's house at Totteridge. But one night the house was broken into by a gang of burglars, and, among other valuables, the miniatures were carried off. The vexation of the family was extreme; but by a curious freak of fortune the portraits were at length discovered in an old curiosity shop in London, and, after years of absence, resumed their old position on the library wall. The second of our portraits shows the future Cardinal as Archdeacon of Chichester, at a time when he was universally regarded as one of the strongest pillars of the English Church. Alas for human foresight! Seven years later, on Passion Sunday, 1851, he felt himself compelled to make the great renunciation, and laid before the footstool of the Pope the costly offering of such a character as in its blend of saintly life, of strength of intellect, of eloquence alike of tongue and pen, and of unrivalled knowledge of the world, has rarely been bestowed on any of the sons of men.

For these portraits we are indebted to the courtesy of Cardinal Manning, of Mr. Wilfred Meynell, and of Messrs. Henry Graves & Co., Pall Mall.

Born 1819.

Top: AGE 38.From a Drawing by G. Richmond, R.A.Middle: AGE 48.From a Photo. by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.Bottom: AGE 63.From a Photo. by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.

T the age of twenty, Mr. Ruskin, then at Christ Church, Oxford, had just won the Newdigate prize poem. Two years later the first volume of "Modern Painters" showed that a new poet had indeed arisen, though a poet who was destined not to cast his thoughts in verse, but in "the other harmony of prose." At eight-and-thirty "Stones of Venice" had appeared. At eight-and-forty (as in our second portrait) he had recently been elected Rede Lecturer at Cambridge, and was in the height of his great combat with the world he lives in—a world which, in his eyes, is given up almost beyond redemption to canters, money-grubbers, inventors of improved machinery, and every kind of charlatan. In volume after volume, he was putting forth—in the midst of much which reason found fantastic—bursts of satire fierce as Juvenal's, and word-pictures more gorgeous than the tints of Turner, conveyed in that inimitable style which is as strong and sweet as Shelley's verse. In these latter days (as our last portrait shows him) Mr. Ruskin, like a prophet in a hermitage, has become more and more of a recluse, though now and then his voice is still audible in a wrathful letter to the papers, like a voice heard crying in the wilderness that all is lost.

From an Engraving by W. Walker.AGE 28.

AGE 45.From Photo. by Cameron of a Painting by G. F. Watts, R.A.

Born 1809.

AGE 80.From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.

HESE portraits represent Mr. Gladstone at three important epochs in his career. At twenty-eight he was the henchman of Sir Robert Peel, and it was at this time that Macaulay described him as "the rising hope of the stern, unbending Tories." He had just produced his work on "Church and State," which attracted a great deal of attention. Our second portrait shows what he was like at the time when, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he put forth the first of the long series of his famous Budgets. The third picture is the one which is now so familiar, representing the illustrious statesman as he is at the present time. It will be observed that the high collars which are inseparable from every picture of Mr. Gladstone, whether serious or comic, have been favourites with him all his life. Like Peel, Palmerston, and Beaconsfield, he is a striking instance of the fact that the toils and cares of responsible statesmanship seem with some constitutions to tend to vigorous old age.

AGE 18.From a Photo. by Ouless, Jersey.

AGE 23.From a Photo. by Ouless, Jersey.

AGE 23 (WITH MR. LANGTRY).From a Photo. by Ouless, Jersey.

PRESENT DAY.From a Photo. by Lafayette, Dublin.

HIS page enables one to trace the blooming of the Jersey Lily from the bud to the full flower; from the lovely Miss Le Breton, the daughter of the Dean, to the newly-married bride, and from the belle of London drawing-rooms to the charming actress who has won on both sides of the world applause which is not gained by loveliness alone, even when, like Mrs. Langtry's, it is of that rare kind, statuesque yet blooming, which is adapted equally to represent the chiselled grace of Galatea, or the burning beauty of the Queen of Egypt.

AGE 28.From a Photo. by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.

AGE 40.From a Photo. by Barraud.

AGE 44.From a Photo. by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.

Born 1844.

R. HARE, as most people have the pleasure of knowing from experience, is the finest actor of old men at present on the stage—if not, indeed, the finest ever seen. It seems strange, as we regard the strong young face of our first portrait, that Mr. Hare was then, or very little later, actingSir Peter Teazleto the very life. Mr. Hare as an old man is old all over. Yet no two of his old men are like each other; no characters bear less resemblance thanLord Kilclarein "A Quiet Rubber," andBenjamin Goldfinchin "A Pair of Spectacles," but which is the most life-like it is difficult to say. Mr. Hare, indeed, prefers his present part to any of hisrôles, as may be learnt, with other facts of interest, by a reference topage 182of this number; and certainly a more delightful piece of character-acting it is impossible to conceive than that which represents the dear old gentleman whose faith in waiters, bootmakers, butlers, brothers, friends, and wives, is so rudely shaken and so happily restored. At his present age, of which our last portrait is a speaking likeness, Mr. Hare is a familiar figure, not only on the stage, but on horseback in the Row, or, more delightful still to his acquaintances, talking from an easy-chair as no one but himselfcantalk, or rising after dinner to make one of his inimitable speeches.

For permission to reproduce these portraits we have to thank the courtesy of Mr. Hare.

Top Left: AGE 23.From a Photograph by W. Keith, Liverpool.Top Right: AGE 37.From a Photograph by Window & Grove.Center:From a Photograph by Barraud.Bottom Left: AGE 18.From a Photograph by Window & Grove.Bottom Right: AGE 27.From a Photograph by Walker & Sons.

Y the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft we are able to present our readers with their portraits at an age when they had not yet met each other—when Marie Wilton was the life and soul of the burlesques at the "Strand" Theatre, and when Mr. Bancroft was still studying in the provinces the art with which he was to charm the audiences of the "Prince of Wales's." In our second portraits Marie Wilton was still Marie Wilton, but was on the eve of becoming Mrs. Bancroft; and finally, in the centre, we have them both as at the present day.

AGE 31.From a Photograph.

AGE 45.From a Photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.

Born 1825.

AGE 64.From a Photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.

T is, unfortunately, impossible to obtain a portrait of Professor Huxley in the days when he was not yet a professor—when he was catching sticklebacks and chasing butterflies at his father's school at Ealing—for at thirty-one, the age at which his earliest photograph was taken, he was already a professor of two sciences—of Natural History at the Royal School of Mines, and of Physiology at the Royal Institute. As assistant-surgeon to H.M.S.Rattlesnakehe had spent three years in studying natural history off the Australian coasts, and had written out the record of his observations in the earliest of his books. The Admiralty refused to pay a penny of the publishing expenses; the young assistant-surgeon's salary was seven-and-sixpence a day; and the volume only saw the light some five years later, when it was issued by the Ray Society. But, from the days of his first fight with fortune, Professor Huxley's fame rose steadily, and by the time at which our second portrait shows him he had been President of the British Association, and had developed that limpidity of style and strength of logic which makes him both the most redoubtable antagonist in the literary arena, and the most popular exponent of the discoveries of science. Professor Huxley's health, never of the very best, has latterly compelled him to withdraw entirely from the active duties of the many posts which he has held; but the magazine articles which he occasionally puts forth show all his early faculties as strong as ever.

For the above interesting early photograph we are indebted to the kindness of Professor and Mrs. Huxley.

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