with all those powers of intellect which, like the buds of a promising plant, only require due preservation from adverse blights to fulfil in fruitful abundance the expectation of him who rears it. It has been a pleasing task, therefore, my dear G, because this hope of your present promise has encouraged me to proceed; yet do not suppose that this hope is shut up in selfish desire; I do not wish you to be what you ought to be, and what with your mind and heart you easily may become, merely on my own account, but principally on your's. Although I confess, that I would fain justify such a wish, even were more self-reference contained in it, upon the plea which every parent may be allowed to make the gratification,-the pure, the consolatory delight which a father Inust experience when he sees his child, in consequence of his anxious care, pursuing that path of life which leads him to honourable expectation in youth, and to dignified esteem in old age.

Many of the sentiments, perhaps, which I have submitted to your adoption, may not be at first acknowledged by you in the vivacious activity of a young imagination; yet, as they are the result of much observation and long experience, I must be content to refer you to the same test which your progress through the world will put into your possession, should you now feel any disinclination to make them the standard of your conduct. There are, indeed, many other directions of your course which may be equally safe, and may bring you with as much security to the accomplishment of what I have in view. Still it must be remembered by you, that I address you under peculiar impressions, such as no one but a parent can feel, and with a knowledge of your mind and disposition, such as Bone else can so fully possess. The circumstances of your present condition are likewise better known to me than to any other who may possess a willing ness to be the guide of your course, and the patron of its progress. I enjoy too, an advantage greater than what such an one can obtain; the conscious mess with which you admit all this in behalf of my pretensions: let this be a point then, on which we may equally coincide, that a son cannot place his confidence in a more disinterested counsel Jor thau a parent; nor can a parent select a more satisfactory object for his anxious provision, than the welfare

of his son-be that confidence cultivated by you with all the attention which such anxiety deserves; and we may then both of us look forward to that happy result which will constitute the richest recompense of our reciprocal discharge of duty.

Why I have prefaced my present letter with this digression from the subject of my preceding one I need not inform you-a moment's thought will justify it to your reflection. And there is, besides, another consideration on my part, which carries with it a solemn reference to myself-half a century has nearly passed over my head-a period of every man's being which leaves him but little claim upon the next half; and he who perceives that the vicissitudes of the former have made those inroads upon his health, which do not permit him to indulge sanguine expectations of any distant prolongation of his years, will regard the instant at which he is engaged in writing to his child, as but a very uncertain respite from the grave; and precarious as it is he will eagerly seize it as one of those opportunities which he may in vain desire on his death-bed. And what, my dear Gdo you suppose are the last earthly anxieties on which the dying parent's hope hinges itself? What can it be but the welfare of his children! Hear me, then, as speaking to you in that awful moment of my transit from this world to the next, and believe, that the same parental solicitude actuates me now, as will then give utterance to the accents of my departing breath.

I have hitherto pressed upon your earnest concern, the disposal of your time as that which comprehends every other important obligation of your existence: not merely as a member of the particular community to which you belong, but as a young man entering upon the wide stage of life, whatever may be the medium of your path. Listen, then, to my last anxieties upon this head, and accept the monitory caution as if it even now ascended from the tomb in which your father may e'er long be hidden from your sight-no where to be found until we shall both appear at the tribunal of Him who knows, and will impartially judge the very imaginations of our hearts.-Redeem the Time.

Let me not alarm you, G-, with the solemnity which introduces this injunction-I am not about to trench.

upon the province of the preacher, or to address you in a studied reference to those eventful responsibilities which await you at the bar of Divine judgment. I am not disposed to anticipate, by an application of so serious a theme, a condition in which I hope, through the righteous efficacy of your Redeemer, you will obtain a sentence of blessedness. This part of my admonition I design to defer until I shall have directed your attention to that temporal consideration of the value of 1 time which your present official calls upon it, ought to impress upon your reflective consciousness. The redemption of time, to which I would lead your effort, applies principally to that salutary application of it, which the importance of its relative value demands; and I would prevent that unavailing sorrow from distressing you, which we so often hear expressed by those, who after having reached the general limit of the life of man, and travelled through the busy occupations of it, at last discover that the aggregate of their useful and active hours, does not amount to one third of the period of their existence, in consequence of those early dissipations, and that youth ful inconsiderateness which have given a character to their babits, and a bias to their inclinations, that have seldom failed to mark the progress of their maturer years, not only to the detriment of the common interests of the community, but also to the irretrievable loss of their own advantage, and in the forfeiture of the esteem and countenance of the most estimable part of society.

I have hitherto endeavoured to instruct you how to estimate time in its pcsitive uses and referential appropriations, so far as they bear relation to your personal and official condition; and I have now to point out to you the means of recovering yourself from any occasional implications into which you may have suffered yourself to fall, and which are adverse to the parental hope that I have indugled, as well as the expectations that you have formed, of both.

If, upon a revision of that portion of your time which was passed at school, you find that you omitted to make yourself master of all the subjects which your studies then comprehended, do not think it beneath your attention to give up at least one hour in a day to that reconsideration of them, which, with your present maturity of intellect,

If

will not only retrieve the lapse, but will enable you to carry them to a farther extent of acquirement with much more facility, than what you experienced in their commencement. you find that since you have held the appointment that has placed you in a situation of public responsibility, you have allowed many circumstantial points of its routine of business to pass by unheeded by you, and which if duly regarded, would have enlarged your sphere of general knowledge, bring those points under immediate revisal, and be not satisfied with yourself until you have added them to your store of intelligence; and this you may be assured of, that the knowledge of business like every other attainment, has its rudiments; and if you desire, as I presume you do, advancement in the path which you have chosen, you must take care that your progress be not impeded by any drawback, which ignorance of the elementary parts of your pursuit must infallibly produce; and as it is always the case, that a degree of disinclination is felt by the mind to turn back upon itself for the purpose of receiving what it has been accustomed to regard as of no consequence, so the longer this lapse is allowed to exist, the greater will be this disinclination, and the deficiency will increase in importance the farther you proceed. Do not content yourself with the idea that you can at any time recover such lapse, for that which can be done at any time, is always best done at once; and when it is done, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that it can no longer interfere with your future progress, but may materially promote it. A certainty this, my dear G―, which I here apply as a strong dissuasive against every species of delay to which you may be disposed to yield in the accomplishment of any day's task. If it be within the compass of your power, never defer until to-morrow what you can complete to-day; for if you do your yesterday's work will always make that of to day more burdensome, and will not fail to increase the toil of to-morrow. Hence the consequence of the omission which I have mentioned, in matters of smaller import, may in time make that of greater unavoidable; and in such a dilemma you will always be subject to confusion of thought and disorder of procedure, which will most certainly betray you into hurry and disarrange.. ment.

You will not, I hope, think me unnecessarily minute, if I advise you always to keep your various papers and documents disposed with that regularity of order which may instantly meet your search, and save you that time which must otherwise be wasted by repeated re-adjustment-not to mention that such regular disposal of them, shews that you take an interest in your occupation, and feel its duties to be your especial business and concern; a feeling which your superiors in office will not fail to find out, and to estimate as it deserves. There are many other minutia which I might mention, but which must be left to this feeling for their regulation. One observation will suffice for all. In your office you are a man of business, and the character must be sustained throughout in small things as well as in great; for uniformity admits of no mixture, and cannot be sustained by desultory efforts. The whole portion of your time, therefore, which your calling requires must be applied to it, and so applied, that it may be commensurate with every day's peculiar demand upon it.

With respect to that part of your time which you have hitherto had the personal disposal of out of office hours, if you have been led by the invitations of the idle and the vain to squander it in parties of frivolous amusement or of dangerous dissipation, resolve to resist them for the future, with a fortitude which may henceforward prove to those who, with no other warrant than their own imaginary pretensions, call themselves your friends, that you are too much your own friend to purchase their fruitless association by so costly a sacrifice as that of your time.-I have already convinced you, I trust, of the folly of surrendering it to a frequent attendance upon theatrical entertainments;-the folly is equally criminal, if you throw it away upon the insipid conversation of a fashionable drawing-room, or the selfish pursuits of the card-table.-As to the first, I will appeal to your own observation; what does the party generally consist of? in nine cases out of ten, of individuals who have no other object than to kill time and to murder reputations and as to the latter, you are well aware that, however it may be concealed, its votaries have little else in view than to pick each other's pockets. In both these mediums of intercourse, most unjustifiable waste is made of

:

those hours which ought to be applied to purposes more worthy of rational beings.-It has often occurred to ine when I have had the misfortune of finding myself thrown into such parties, that if the conversation had been taken down, and afterwards shewn to those who took part in it, a severer rebuke could not be given to them; and when I have seen a round or a square table filled with young people or old, for it matters not which, the same selfishness presides, I have contemplated them as bartering for a few pieces of money, those precious minutes of life, which on their death beds they would give worlds to secure, as a respite from the mouth of the grave. If, G, you are a card-player, and have been told that you play a good game at whist, consider the eulogium as the severest reproof that you could receivefor what does your skill demonstrate? why, that you have expended a considerable portion of your time in acquiring that which does not make you wiser, but more cunning, than your competitors, and which robs you of an inestimable possession, which you know not how to value arightAllow me to tell you, that you cannot afford to win at so great a loss-And even the money which you hazard, and which is the least part of the risk, might be much better disposed of than to be made a stake on which you venture what, so pledged, you may never be able to redeem. An aged gambler is a despicable character; and a young man who is attached to the card-table bids fair to become that character. How much better would it be for him to apply both his money and time to those legitimate objects of gain which will enrich his mind, and preserve it from all those conflicts of cupidity and disappointment which ruffle the tem per, by the excitements of envy and avarice, and debase his reason by the worst perversions of all his intellectual powers! Do not let your vanily be so acted upon; for the applause of your card-table associates is no better than that which one pick pocket lavishes upon another. And, in fact, the professed card-player is a double thief. for he robs himself as well as others. I would, therefore, as earnestly exhort you to avoid such bad company, as I would counsel you to avoid the haunts of the midnight robber. But perhaps you will plead the sanction of custom-do so, and I will answer,

that it is custom "more honoured in the breach than in the observance." Nor will I merely use the quotation, but I will give you my reason for using it-He who honours not himself more than his compliance with a pernicious custom, must not expect to be honoured by those whose good opinion is worth possessing. And he that does not value the real esteem of the good more than the hollow praise of the bad, can never secure his conscience from

self-reproach. If, then, you are in the slightest degree conscious of having thrown away your leisure time in so unprofitable an occupation of it, resolve to redeem what you have so lost, while it is in your power.-And ever bear in mind, that you have no right to be so profuse of what is not your own-for no man's time can be strictly called his own; since he knows not how long he may possess it-and while he does possess it, he owes an account of it to society and his GoD:-and surely it is but a very poor excuse for a deficient balance to plead moral extrava. gance in behalf of the deficit. What you owe to society is a debt of honour of much greater consequence than any debt of honour, as it is called, which you may incur at the card-table-What you owe to your God must inevitably be paid, either in duty or punishment -What you owe to yourself you cannot discharge without fulfilling your duties to both. Now the card-table cannot help you to acquit yourself of any part of this responsibility, but may increase it beyond the reach of any = liquidation. I shall not now reason upon the more solemn mischiefs which must arise from this profligate custom. This part of the present subject I shall reserve for my address to you as a Christian. And for the present I shall release your patience from longer endurance, with the intention of noticing in my next letter that loss of time which is always the consequence of unthinking dissipation. One word by way of summing up all that I have written in this, and then I have done -The approval of your own conscience is cheaply purchased by the rejection of any folly or crime which is sanctioned only by the vice of fashion or the law of fools. That this approving voice may never cease to cheer you in your course through this world, and defend you against every contrary influence, you will believe to be the wish of Your affectionate Father, W.

THE REPOSITORY. No. XLIV.

A SELECT COLLECTION OF FUGITIVE PIECES.

"The mind of man not being capable of having many ideas under view at once, it was necessary to have a REPOSITORY TO lay up those ideas."-LOCKE,

half

THE NEW GOLD COIN.

the attention of the public is likely to be directed to the new sovereigns, it may be gratifying to the public to receive some further information respecting these interesting innovations, or revivals in our coinage, than has hitherto been communicated by the public prints.

The history of the English Coinage appears to have been so little read, that, on the first appearance of the Sovereigns, the captious critics did not hesitate to pronounce, that, "nothing could be less British," than their appellation, "and that it was so general, that it would belong to the species of any monarchial government whatever, and was less appropriate to England than any other."

The fact is so manifest, that it is disgraceful for a man who pretends to general knowledge, to be ignorant that, from the reign of Henry VII. in the year 1485, to the 43d of Elizabeth, in the year 1601, gold pieces were regularly issued, under the denomination of Sovereigns, from the English mint, and were therefore probably in general circulation in England for more than 200 years, and perhaps to a period not 200 years ago; and that so far was the appellation imposed upon them for the purpose of conveying any extravagant ideas of monarchial authority, that it is supposed to have been first applied to the pieces from popular conception or concurrence, on account of the extraordinary display which their obverse exhibited of the form and attributes of the royal person. There was then represented on it, not as now, a mere bust, en profile, but the whole figure, vis a vis, of the monarch on his throne, holding in his hands the scepter and the orb, with other appropriate accompaniments, which gave to the piece a very rich and splendid appearance. "The gold money, in general," says Snelling, who had made the coinage of the kingdom his particu lar study, "received their name from their type; the ROYAL (often called Ryal, and Riall,) being thus called from their representing the King in his royal robes, the MASSE, (i. e. the Mace,) from

the SCEPTER in his hand; the CHAISE, from the CHAIR; and the same of the ANGEL, SALUTE, SOVEREIGN, &c." ProIceeding in a like strain of reasoning, more minutely, with respect to the NOBLE, of which he is treating in the passage from which this extract is taken, and which had the impression of a Ship," wherein the " King," Edward III. who commenced the coinage of the pieces called NOBLES, (which continued to be coined regularly, with the same devise, till the reign of Henry VIII. and occasionally to that of Charles I.) was exhibited in armour, standing upright, holding on his left arm his shield, with the quartered arms of France and England, and, in his right hand, his "sword" erect: the author adds, “it is probable that this coin received its name on the same account; its type being expreisive of the King's NOBLE resolution to maintain the sovereignty of the sea, and at the same time commemorative of the NOBLE Victory which he had obtained over his enemies, some time before, on that element; and this appears to have been an opinion of an ancient author, in M.S. in the Cottonian Library, who

says

"For four things our NOBLE sheweth to me, King, Ship, and Sword, and POWER OF THE SEE."

Respecting the derivation of the appellation SOVEREIGN, as applied to English Gold Coins, the same respectable author, Snelling, whose judgment on subjects of this nature there is little room to doubt, happens, incidentally, to be still more explicit, and expresses his opinion concerning its origin and application, not only without hesitation, but with positive indications of patriotic satisfaction. This word, SOVEREIGN." saith he, when describing the double Royal, or Sovereign of Henry the VIIlth, who had revived the coin, with its appropriate character-" this word Sovereign appears to be of ENGLISH ORIGIN, and to have HAD ITS BIRTH HERE, being derived from the type of the King, or SOVEREIGN, who is exhibited on it, sitting in state; which with some little difference, had been in use two centuries before."

As the GUINEA afterwards in the reign of Charles the Ild. obtained its name among the people, because the African Company at that time brought from the coast of Guinea the precious metal of which the coin was made, so the appellation of SOVEREIGN was probably given to the coin, at present

in question, from a similar kind of popular association of ideas. What warrants this opinion of their origin, is a circumstance that is found to be com mon to them both; namely, that the appellation by which they were respectively known, did not obtain the stamp of official authority, or, at least, does not appear in any of the MINT INDENTURES, till a considerable time after the coins, which bore the names referred to, were originally issued."

Though these particulars may be sufficient to vindicate the application of the name of SOVEREIGN to the coin at present entering into circulation, another reason may be adduced from the circumstance of its value being the same as the coin that formerly bore a similar denomination. The SOVEREIGN of Henry VII. was the first English gold piece of the value of 20 shillings. Till that period the gold coins had generally a reference to the Mark (of 13s. 4d. value), which, like the present Pound sterling, was a nominal sum, according to which all mercantile accounts in the kingdom were reckoned. The principle of decimal division having been early acknowledged to afford an obvious facility in every pecuniary business, it has since been, for several centuries, in use in our practical arithmetic. In process of time, however, the coins that had been issued at the rate of 20 shillings had become advanced in their value; and thus an absurd and perplexing difference was made between our accounts on paper and in the interchange of money; and therefore now, on the issue of the present coinage, it was, with great consistency, determined to revert to the principle, which was unqestionably proper, the principle of decimal division. What then should be the appellation of this new 20 shilling piece -The term POUND, applied to a coin, which as gold amounted but to a few peany weights, and as silver, would amount only to a few ounces, would independent of its interference with the name and value of a 20 shilling Bank Note, be manifestly incorrect. An appeliation, not in use, was obviously expedient, for the purpose of distinction; and either a new one must have been created, which have been still more objectionable than the ancient name, or tha, against which no objections appear to have ever been made, in times of yore, was to be revived, and pass again in currency along with the new-fashioned coin.