One of the first objects of interest I went to visit was the Mint, the labours of which are of course immensely increased since the working of the Californian mines.  Men are coming in every day with gold in greater or lesser quantities; it is first assayed, and the per-centage for this work being deducted, the value is paid in coin to the owner.  While I was there, I saw a wiry-looking fellow arrive, in bright hat and brighter satin waistcoat, with a beard as bushy as an Indian jungle, and as red as the furnace into which his precious burden was to be thrown.  Two small leather bags were carefully taken out of a waist-belt, their contents emptied into a tin can, a number placed in the can, and a corresponding number given him—­no words spoken:  in two days he would return, and, producing his number, receive value in coin.  The dust would all have gone into a good-sized coffee-cup.  I asked the officer about the value. “400l., sir.”  He had left a New England state some eight months previous, and was going home to invest in land.

What strikes a stranger most on entering the Mint, is the absence of all extra defence round it; the building appears as open as any London house.  The process is, of course, essentially the same as elsewhere; but I was astonished when the director told me that the parties employed in the establishment are never searched on leaving, though the value of hundreds of thousands of dollars is daily passing through their hands in every shape.  The water in which the workmen wash their hands runs into a tank below, and from this water, value to the amount of from 60l. to 80l. is extracted annually.  The sweepings, &c., after the most careful sifting, are packed in casks and sold—­chiefly, I believe, to European Jews—­for 4000l. annually.  The only peculiarity in the Philadelphian Mint is a frame-work for counting the number of pieces coined, by which ingenious contrivance—­rendered necessary by Californian pressure—­one man does the work of from twenty to thirty.  The operation of weighing the several pieces of coin being of a delicate nature, it is confided to the hands of the fair sex, who occupy a room to themselves, where each daughter of Eve sits with the gravity of a Chancellor opposite a delicate pair of scales.  Most parts of the establishment are open to the public from ten till two, and they are only excluded from those portions of the building where intrusion would impede the operations in progress.

This city, like most others in America, is liberally supplied with water.  Magnificent basins are built in a natural mound at Fairmount, nearly opposite an old family mansion of the Barings, and the water is forced up into these basins from the river by powerful water-wheels, worked by the said river, which is dammed up for the purpose of obtaining sufficient fall, as the stream is sometimes very low.

Perhaps the most interesting, and certainly the most imposing sight in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia, is “The Gerard College.”  So singular and successful a career as that of the founder deserves a slight record.