forbidden mass or absolution; indeed, they were under perpetual excommunication, and were assured that they would spend eternity at the bottom of hell. Nor had they-on the Continent, at all events—any standing before the secular law. Those who harmed them went unpunished; yet if a minstrel was ill handled, he had the privilege of beating the shadow of his offender.

Most minstrels were itinerant; others were retained by lords as jesters. Not seldom they were women, or, at all events, women followed many a band of minstrels and lived their hard and dissolute life. The very name of minstrel was a byword, but everywhere they were welcome. After the invention of printing, there was little place for the minstrel as an intermediary between author and public. He gradually found his main occupation as a balladsinger at street corners or at the wassails of the more ignorant barons. Musicians still continued, it is true, to be retained at Court, and ample provision was made for their maintenance. But by an act of Parliament in the thirty-ninth year of Elizabeth's reign, 'ministrels abroad' were classed as 'rogues and vagabonds,' and were ordered to be punished as such.

In spite of new social conditions, minstrelsy was slow in dying out. George the Second maintained a company of twenty-four musicians, who were employed in the service of the Chapel Royal and in rendering odes on birthdays and New Year's. Scott, as is well known, collected the minstrelsy of the Scottish border, consisting of

traditional ballads that were still recited. And in the Lay of the Last Minstrel is described a wandering harper who is supposed to have lived at the close of the seventeenth century. Recently, too, W. B. Yeats has discovered 'the last gleeman in Ireland,' a certain Michael Moran, blind almost from birth. "He was," says Yeats, "a true gleeman, being alike poet, jester, and newsman of the people. The descendant of the old gleeman, it is said, is still not unknown in the Orkneys.

In

AMERICAN MINSTRELS. Toward the beginning of the nineteenth century a new type, the Southern negro, appeared on the American stage. At first he was accepted merely as a comic character, but gradually his songs and eccentricities overshadowed his personal characteristics, and he began to be looked upon as a 'feature' in the performance. Before the advent of Thomas D. Rice, the reputed founder of negro minstrelsy, there had been a score of actors, who, as negro comedians, had sung and danced their way into popular favor; but Rice was the first minstrel whose performances received universal recognition. His most famous character, 'Jim Crow,' was drawn from life, its original being an old Louisville slave. In 1836 Rice went to England, where he duplicated his American successes. dividual negro minstrels now became very numerous, and in 1843 the first company, the 'Virginia Minstrels,' was formed. It consisted of 'Dan' Emmett, 'Frank' Brower, 'Billy' Whitlock, and 'Dick' Pelham. The style of performance adopted by them has remained much the same ever since, for they danced, sang, played their instruments, and carried on a running dialogue of jokes. Among the more famous bands of minstrels may be mentioned: White's 'Kitchen Minstrels,' his 'Virginia Serenaders,' his 'New York Minstrels;' 'Christy's Minstrels,' which made a tremendous sensation; 'Bryant's Minstrels,' 'Wood's Minstrels,' and the companies formed by "Tony' Pastor, Thatcher, Primrose, Dockstader, West, Buckley, Backus, Birch, and Bailey. Minstrel performances are usually of one general character. The performers, who are always men and who number from 15 to 40, sit in a semicircle. At either end sit the 'end men,' or 'bones,' while in the middle of the line is the 'interlocutor,' who gravely asks his companions, especially the 'end men,' such questions as shall bring out their stock of jests. Each member of the troupe takes some part in the performance. The minstrel's characteristic instruments are the guitar, the banjo, tambourine, and the 'bones,' which are two pairs of ebony sticks, about an inch wide and six inches long, and are clapped together in the performer's fingers.

Consult, in general: Wilhelm von Hertz, "Die Spielleute," an essay in his delightful Spielmannsbuch, second edition (Stuttgart, 1900); Percy, Reliques of Ancient Poetry, vol. i. (1765); Ritson, Ancient English Metrical Romances, vol. i. (1802); and Chappell, National English Airs (1838); Langland's Piers Plowman (The G. Text Passus i. and xvi.; and the Prologue of the A. Text). For the scôp, consult: Stopford Brooke, English Literature from the Beginning to the Norman Conquest (New York, 1898); and Henry Morley, English Literature, vol. ii. (New York, 1888). For the later minstrelsy, consult W. G. Courthope, "The Decay of English Minstrelsy," in A History of

MINSTREL BOY, THE. A favorite song in Moore's Irish Melodies. The music is that of "The Moreen," an old Irish air.

MINT (AS. mynet, mynit, mynyt, from Lat. moneta, mint, epithet of Juno, whose temple at Rome was the mint, from monere, to warn). An establishment for making coins or metallic money. See MONEY.

The earliest regulations regarding the English mint belong to Anglo-Saxon times. An officer called a reeve is referred to in the laws of Canute as having some jurisdiction over it, and certain names which, in addition to that of the sovereign, appear on the Anglo-Saxon coins, seem to have been those of the moneyers, or principal officers of the mint. Besides the sovereign, barons, bishops, and the greater monasteries had their respective mints, where they exercised the right of coinage, a privilege enjoyed by the archbishops of Canterbury as late as the reign of Henry VIII., and by Wolsey as Bishop of Durham and Archbishop of York.

After the Norman Conquest the officers of the royal mint became to a certain extent subject to the authority of the exchequer. Both in Saxon and Norman times there existed, under control of the principal mint in London, a number of provincial mints in different towns of England; there were no fewer than thirty-eight in the time of Ethelred, and the last of them were only done away with in the reign of William III. The officers of the mint were formed into a corporation by a charter of Edward II.; they consisted of the warden, master, comptroller, assay-master, workers, coiners, and subordinates. The seigniorage for coining at one time formed no inconsiderable item in the revenues of the Crown. It was a deduction made from the bullion coined, and comprehended both a charge for defraying the expense of coinage and the sovereign's profit in virtue of his prerogative. In the reign of Henry VI. the seigniorage amounted to 6d. in the pound; in the reign of Edward I., ls. 22d. The seigniorage on gold was abolished during the reign of Charles II. and has never since been exacted. The shere, or remedy, as it is now called, was an allowance for the unavoidable imperfection of the coin.

A new mint was erected on Tower Hill in 1810. In 1815 some alterations were made in the constitution of the mint, and in 1851 a complete change was introduced in the whole system of administration. The control of the mint was vested in a master and a deputy master, and comptroller. The mastership, which had in the early part of the last century become a political appointment held by an adherent of the Government, was restored to the position of a permanent office, the master being the ostensible executive head of the establishment. Further changes were made in the administration of the mint in 1869.

The mastership was added to the duties of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, without any addition of salary, and the offices of deputy master and comptroller were amalgamated.

A mint was established at Sydney in 1853 and at Melbourne in 1869 to coin the gold so largely found in Australia.

The first mint in the United States was established at Philadelphia by the coinage act of

mint was the copper cent of 1793. Silver dollars were first coined in 1794, and gold eagles in 1795. At the close of the nineteenth century there were four mints, located at Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Carson City, respectively. Assay offices are located at New York, Denver, Helena, Boisé, Charlotte, Saint Louis, Deadwood, and Seattle. The act of April 1, 1873, put all the mints and assay offices on the same footing as a bureau of the Treasury Department, under the superintendence of the Director of the Mint, who is appointed by the President for a term of five years and is subordinate to the Secretary of the Treasury. The Philadelphia mint has an engraver who supervises the manufacture of the dies used in all the United States mints. The description and history of the various coins in use in the United States, both during colonial times and since, is given under MONEY.

PROCESSES OF COINING. Down to the middle of the sixteenth century little or no improvement seems to have been made in the art of coining from the time of its invention. The metal was simply hammered into slips, which were afterwards cut up into squares of one size and then forged round. The required impression was given to these by placing them in turn between two dies and striking them with a hammer. As it was not easy by this method to place the dies exactly above each other, or to apply proper force, coins so made were always faulty and had the edges unfinished, which rendered them liable to be clipped. The first great step was the application of the screw, invented in 1553 by a French engraver of the name of Brucher. plan was found expensive at first, and it was not till 1662 that it altogether superseded the hammer in the English mint. In 1882 the leverpress was introduced.

The

The processes required for converting the crude metal into money are: (1) Assaying; (2) refining or parting, which reduces the material into ingots or bars of standard purity; (3) reducing the bars to coinage ingots by mixing with them the proper amount of copper alloy; (4) coining, or transforming the coinage ingots into money. The gold and silver which is brought to the mint may be in a crude or manufactured condition and is of every degree of fineness. The initial process, therefore, is to assay the metal, in order both to determine its value and the subsequent minting operations necessary to refine it. This process and the succeeding one of refining are described in the metallurgical articles on GOLD and SILVER and under ASSAYING. The bullion thus purified is reduced to bars, a gold bar usually weighing 6000 ounces, worth about $8000. It is now ready to be used for industrial purposes, or for the next stage in the coinage process.

The consumption of gold and silver in the arts and industries is very great. During the year ending June 30, 1895, gold and silver bars for industrial use, in about equal ratio, were manufactured in the Philadelphia mint and in the assay office at New York to the coinage value of $17,818,581. Private refineries furnished not less than $5,000,000 more. These bars are 0.999 fine. A depositor may bring crude bullion in any quantity, of $100 or more in value, and receive either fine gold bars or coin, at his option, a charge