MR. URBAN,-In perusing different works since the publication of the 24th vol. of the Archæologia, I find the following accounts relating to Hats, which may afford some

amusement.

Evelyn in his Diary, 1644-5, mentions that the Jews in Rome "all wear yellow hatts," p. 124. And again in p. 169, "The Jewes in Rome wore red hatts til the Cardinal of Lions, being short-sighted, lately saluted one of them, thinking him to be a Cardinal, as he passed by his coach; on which an order was made that they should use only the yellow colour."

In the English Romayne Life, by Anthonie Munday, 1590, b. 1. it is mentioned "that the Jewes (in Rome) may be knowne from any other people, every one weareth a yellow cap or hatte, and if he goe abroade without it, they will use him very yll favouredly. In this order they come to the sermon, and when any of them doth chaunge his faith, he taketh his yellow cap or hatte off from his head, and throwes it away with great violence; then will a hundred offer him a blacke cap or hatte," &c.-Harl. Miscel.

The Present State of England, by Walter Carey, printed 1627. "I saw a compleat gentleman of late, whose beaver hat cost thirty-seven shillings, a feather twenty shillings, the hat-band three pounds,'

&c.

Again "I will not forget to touch a little the foolish and costly fashion of changing fashions, noted especially and objected against our English nation, and in one thing only, I mean the hat, I will express our prodigious folly in all the rest. Of late the broad-brimmed hat came suddenly in fashion, and put all others out of countenance and request, and happy were they that I could get them soonest, and be first seen in that fashion, so that a computation being made, there is at least 300,000l. or much more, in England only, bestowed on broadbrimmed hats within one year and a half. As for others, either beaver or felts, they were on a sudden of no reckoning at all, insomuch that myself, still continuing one fashion, bought a beaver hat for five shillings, which the year before could not be had under thirty shillings."-Harl. Miscel.

In plate XL. vol. xxiv. of the Archæologia, the hat of James Howell, which is copied from an old print, I have since discovered in perusing the Censuria Lit. (Art. DLXVII.) that it belonged to a scarce work entitled England's Teares for the present wars, &c. 1644."

J. A. R.

E. I. C. says, " Mr. Kempe having_referred to a description by me of the effigy of Bishop Shepey at Rochester, which appeared in your Magazine at the time of the discovery, I am happy to have an opportunity (though somewhat late in the day) of corroborating my former statement respecting the beard of the effigy; it having been stated in your pages that such beard was added after the discovery was made. Now, as I have lately had an opportunity of seeing not only the drawing by Mr. Swaine, which Mr. Kempe exhibited to the Antiquarian Society, but also an elaborate series of drawings by Mr. Cottingham, the architect of the cathedral, I am enabled to state that my observations were accurate, which perhaps at this period I should not have deemed necessary to assert but for the recent reference to my description."

Respecting the ancient family of Stuart of Tillicoultrie, INVESTIGATOR states that in a pedigree which he has lately seen, the fourth son of Alexander Stuart, of Galstoun, the grandson of Mr. John Stuart, of Bonkyll, is denominated Robert Stuart, this place exists, or has existed. Garscute, of Barscube, and inquires in what county about five miles from Glasgow, he conceives cannot be the same.

tion respecting the Greek Church formerly Au INQUIRER asks for historical informain Stag-lane, now called Crown-street, at what time it belonged to the Greeks, and when it became the property of the French congregation? Also for the inscription over the portal, now almost obliterated.

P. 268. The title should be Viscount Dawnay, of the county of Downe, not in the county of Downe. Down is now the orthography of the county, but the Dawnay family retain the ancient mode of spelling

the name with an e final.

P. 312. At ST. MALO died Samuel Lee, a non-conformist divine, on his return from New England, having been taken prisoner by a French privateer in 1691. He was author of several antiquarian as well as theological works.

P. 874, read Lord Gwydyr, not Gwydir.

M. H. asks by whom was Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible first translated into English? and if there ever has been an Italian or a Spanish translation of the work?

Mr. URBAN,

AS a Committee is now sitting on the question of renewing the Bank Charter, it is desirable that enquiry should be made into its history, for the purpose of pointing out the advantages which have accrued from it to the public, and the possibility of rendering it more highly and generally beneficial; likewise by examining the nature and causes of the difficulties and dangers it has had to encounter, to ascertain the principles upon which the security of our paper currency depends,

It is evident from their measures, as well as from their speeches, that the views of the Earls of Liverpool were almost diametrically opposite to those of Mr. Pitt on the subject of Paper Currency, and upon other branches of financial policy, particularly Treaties of Commerce and the Sinking Fund. Mr. Pitt's views were more in conformity with those of the generality of men of business, but the two Earls laid claim to superior knowledge from their acquaintance with the writings of theorists.

Under the auspices of Mr. Pitt, the transition from war to peace was rendered a transition from degradation and despondency to a state of unexampled prosperity, which under the same guidance was maintained amidst the most arduous contest in which this country ever was engaged. Our success in that contest is attributed by his admirers to the financial system introduced by Mr. Pitt, while on the other hand they ascribe the feebleness of our efforts during the American war to the restrictions on the Currency, introduced by the first Earl of Liverpool soon after the commencement of that contest, and which were renewed with greater rigour by his son after the fall of Napoleon.

It is generally acknowledged that under the operation of the measure

intended to restore a more wholesome state of currency, the country has been less prosperous than during the preceding period. Lord King, the ablest of our theoretical writers, has acknowledged this to be the case with regard to agriculture, but the advocates of the present system attribute all the evils which have accompanied its introduction and developement to the previous departure from sound theory, of which they accuse Mr. Pitt, and particularly to the extension of our paper currency.

The proposed inquiry into the history of the Bank of England, and into the state of things which preceded its establishment, is intended to serve as a test of the theoretical views from which have originated two prominent measures of the present system, the restriction of silver payment, and the suppression of the small note currency.

A full statement of these views has been bequeathed to us by the first Earl of Liverpool, in his Letter to the King, published two years before his own death, and one year before that of Mr. Pitt. He tells us that he had attributed the difficulties of the Bank in 1797 to an excess of paper currency, and that he was of opinion the prohibition of two-pound notes in 1776 ought to have been extended to a higher denomination. The five-pound notes of the Bank of England had been first put into circulation about two years before the suspension, in consequence of the scarcity of money occasioned by commercial speculation. Mr. Pitt declared before the Committee that the increase of commerce required an increase of circulating medium; but, in conformity with Adam Smith, Lord Liverpool considered scarcity of money as certain evidence of overtrading.

In a passage quoted by his Lord.

ship, paper currency is represented by Adam Smith as merely supplying the place of the coin which would otherwise circulate; and it is generally supposed by theorists, that an equal quantity of coin is always driven out of circulation by the introduction of paper currency, until the whole is expelled, after which any addition must occasion a depreciation of the currency; therefore the circulation of small notes has been twice prohibited at the instigation of the Earls of Liverpool, for the purpose of keeping in constant and general use a sufficient quantity of gold to serve as a measure of the value of our currency: but are not the twenty shillings given in exchange for a one pound note a more correct measure of its value? This I shall endeavour to substantiate.

It certainly is of the greatest importance to keep the value of our currency as uniform as possible; this can only be done by adhering to one sole standard measure, and imperfect as it may be, it is impossible to select a better measure than silver. Our ancestors, in conformity with the practice of the whole civilized world, made silver the measure of their gold coin, as well as of commodities; therefore during more than two centuries previous to 1816, no alteration was made in our silver coinage, but the weight or price of our gold coin had been altered whenever it was expedient, in order that it might conform to the silver standard; and the same thing has been done in France and Holland.

The supposed alteration of our standard from silver to gold, upon which Lord Liverpool insisted in his Letter to the King, was only an alteration in our mode of payment occasioned by the establishment of the Bank of England, and the introduction of paper currency; previous to which, our payments were made in silver, as is still the practice generally on the Continent; therefore our bank notes ought to be considered as representing the silver for which they were originally substituted, not the gold for which they are occasionally exchanged, but which is not sufficiently abundant to supply their place. By losing sight of this fact, and making gold the sole legal tender, we have exposed the Bank and the whole trade of the kingdom to such danger, that a total suspension of payment was with

great difficulty avoided in the autumn of 1825, and a perfect restoration of confidence has not yet been effected.

Gold never was sufficiently abundant for general use in large payments, either in this or in any other country, and as it has increased in scarcity, it has every where advanced in price, or fallen more into disuse. The gold florin formerly coined by almost every state in Germany, but now no longer to be met with, was used to pay for all the corn brought down the Rhine to Holland, and until very lately all the corn of Poland was paid for in gold. In both cases the necessity of using it has been removed by the greater convenience of bills of exchange. During the seventeenth century, gold advanced in price one half; and the weight and price of our gold coin was altered in that proportion, while our silver coin remained unaltered, because it was our standard measure. The twenty shilling gold coins of James I. and the two Charleses, though of less weight than those of the preceding coinage, soon passed current above the rate at which they were issued. The guinea which was coined by Charles II. as a twenty-shilling piece, became worth more than twenty-four shillings in full weight silver coin, in the reign of King William; and it is not impossible increasing scarcity might have raised the price to twenty or twenty-five pounds per ounce (gold being now about one hundred times as scarce as silver), if the necessity of using it had not been generally diminished by making paper the representative of silver.

The usefulness of silver as a commodity, and the great abundance of it kept for that purpose, renders the value of it less dependent on the use of it as money, and it is very desirable that the commodity we use as our standard measure, should not be liable to fluctuations in its own value, from this application of it. On this account silver is preferable to any other commodity of similarly limited production. The only reason for preferring gold is the compactness of its value; in this respect it is surpassed by paper currency representing silver; therefore, subsequent to the establishment of the Bank of England, the price of gold became nearly reduced to its value for those purposes for which it is indispensible as a commo