Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume II.djvu/227

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rollers; 3dly, clipping the blank pieces of copper for the die; 4-thly, shaking the coin in bags; 5thly, stamping the pieces. Each of the eight coining machines, is capable of striking from seventy to eighty-four pieces of money in one minute, that is between thirty and forty thousand per hour; and at the same time that it strikes the face and re- verse, it forms the pattern of the edge, whatever it may be, either ornament or inscription; turning it out after all, of shape most perfect, and in dimen- sion most uniform. Four boys of twelve years old are capable of coining, by means of this machinery, two hundred thousand pieces in the course of six hours. To its other wonders, the apparatus adds the magical one of precluding fraud, by keep- ing an accurate account of every coin which passes through it. Well does this triumph of mechanism deserve the laurel woven for it by the hand of an elegant bard, who has boldly dared to attempt, and happily succeeded in the attempt, to inlist ima- gination under the banner of science, and to lead her votaries from the loose analogies, which dress out the imagery of poetry, to the stricter ones which form the ratiocination of philosophy.

<! Now his hard hands on Mona's rifted crest,

iC Bosom' d in rock her azure ores arrest ;

" With iron lips his rapid roller:; seize

r: The lengthen'd bars in their expansive sqn eze

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