Chapter XXII: , and Last (4)

But, on the other hand, it may be urged that the immediate happiness of those concerned is not so much contemplated in the foundations as their usefulness, and that they must be content to cull the flowers which grow beside the path of duty. This may be answered by urging that, in certain cases, a man’s usefulness is diminished instead of being increased by his being denied certain sources of happiness. The best workman is ever the man who is best fed and clothed, and made most generally comfortable; even so in the great work of human life is that individual most efficient whose legitimate wants, both of body and soul, are satisfied. The motives which actuated the founders of the Roman Catholic colleges were no doubt, as most human motives are, of a mixed nature. On the one hand, they wished their money to fructify and do as much good as possible; on the other hand, they wished it to fructify in such a way as to redeem their own souls from purgatory, by providing a succession of those who should sing masses for them for all time; at the same time, it was the prevailing notion in these times, and is now, among Romanists, that celibacy, if not the happiest, is the holiest state of man.[4] If there be any truth in this, even to the most limited extent, there is something to be said for the system; but if the poor founders have been cheated out of their masses, and may remain, for all the present generation care, boiling and broiling in purgatory to the end of time, it seems purely hypocritical to lean on a notion which has no better foundation than the ruling opinions of founders. All the great and imposing faith is gone which would support a heavy burden with the supernatural sinews of religion, and the burden remains still to be borne as it best may by human muscle alone. But it may be also said, the fellowships of colleges are in themselves eleemosynary institutions, and poverty was in most cases made a condition of the enjoyment of them; and just as, under the new poor-law system, we imagine that a man, though he has a right to existence, has no right to encumbrances which others must support, so some would argue that the charity of the founders ought to be thankfully accepted under all its conditions. But in the first place, the question may be asked, whether apparent necessity, rather than humanity, did not suggest the new poor-law system? In the next place, whether that can strictly be called eleemosynary of which merit is made a condition? We give to a beggar sometimes, although we know him to be utterly worthless, merely because he is destitute; and even the utterly worthless have a certain claim, in right of their Maker’s image; but we give to a good man as a tribute to his virtue, and the application of these foundations to proficiency in knowledge is to those who accept them usually accounted peculiarly honourable, just as a national pension is to the wounded soldier. Besides, it might be said that all bequests are in a manner eleemosynary, because the legacy is not a payment for labour in most cases, but a free gift from the testator to the legatee; nor is its character materially altered by the fact of its having been given under conditions. It appears to some that the college property is as much real property to those who have the use of it, as any property bequeathed subject to conditions; such as, for instance, the law of entail in England. Indeed, a case has been mentioned, in which, for some peculiar reason, a very rich man inherited his estates subject to this very condition of celibacy. And eleemosynary institutions, strictly so called, are commonly administered by trustees, not by those who reap the benefits of them, as is the case with college fellowships. I think I have now, as well as I can, stated the arguments, both _pro_ and _con_, though perhaps it is easy for you to see to which side I lean. I confess that I should regard the repeal of celibacy as a conservative change, because it would give individuals a more enduring interest in their University. I dread innovation, and especially from profane hands; at the same time, I feel the necessity of such wholesome repairs in the constitution of Alma Mater as shall secure for her, as far as possible, a perpetuity of youth, or at least a green old age. How other changes, such as the admission of Dissenters, can be brought about without ignoring the entire history, associations, and character of the University, I do not well see. If Dissenters are admitted at all, Roman Catholics must be admitted with the rest; and they may perhaps lay claim to a participation in the good things of the University, seeing that the ancient foundations were undoubtedly made in their favour; and if this participation be allowed, the rights of the foundation will be again disturbed; and they may push their claim to the entire exclusion of all other communities, for, unless there be a reason for disfranchising them, they will ask why others should share advantages originally intended for them alone. They are not like the Jews, a sect who keep to themselves, and seek not to domineer over others; but universal dominion is as much the policy of pontifical as of imperial Rome. Thus they will be sure to take every advantage. Thus there is a _primâ facie_ danger in mooting any integral question concerning the constitution of the University, lest an opening should be unwarily made which would destroy everything on which its existence depends; and this is, in my opinion, the most plausible argument in favour of continuing the celibacy of Fellows. But averse as all well-wishers to Oxford would be to any change in the way of subtraction or diminution of her privileges, no such one could look with coldness on any proposed additions to her area of efficiency, and especially on extensions which seem suggested by her natural aptitudes. As Cambridge seems to possess the soil in which everything connected, however remotely, with science, is destined especially to thrive, such as natural history in its various branches, so does Oxford appear to be that University which should assume a prominently artistic character. The foundations of a new museum have been laid, which is to be built on a grand and imposing scale. Is its chief attraction, when completed, to consist in a collection of dried beetles and stuffed humming-birds, or even a complete skeleton of the megatherium, if such a thing is to be had; or is an attempt to be made to bring together, by every possible means, a collection of works of art which would really do credit to the University? It must be remembered that we have in England no national gallery worthy of the name; not that the pictures composing the collection in Trafalgar Square are to be despised—far from it; but the building which contains them shows them to so little advantage, and is altogether so inadequate, that it presents few temptations to large additions, either by purchase, gift, or bequest. The very atmosphere of London is an argument against building a new national gallery in the neighbourhood of any of the centres of metropolitan life. Trees may be blackened, but flourish under the soot; but the purity of the marble, and the freshness of the canvass, are liable to be permanently discoloured by the constant action of an air impregnated with smoke, in a manner far other than that in which they receive the mere mellowness of age. This would be conclusive against a central situation, and if such a building is to be placed in the suburb, to arrive at it would cost a sacrifice of time and effort little short of that necessary to arrive at a site at a moderate railroad distance from the metropolis. As it is, Oxford is a great point of attraction to all strangers, and no Englishman who had not seen it, could pretend to an average knowledge of his own country. It is even placed within reach of the working-classes of London by excursion-trains, who are thus led in the pursuit of pure air to a place full of associations, which are in every way likely to do them good. It seems to me that it is worth considering whether the national gallery of England might not with advantage be placed at Oxford, and combined in some way with the scheme of the new museum. A school of art would probably spring up around it, to which the University would naturally present many advantages, and to which it might well extend peculiar privileges. The present is not the worst time to consider this matter, when the existence of a great war postpones the execution of all plans of subordinate importance. It is quite certain that everything cannot be concentrated in London; and this being the case, it is well to consider what other places are calculated, in their own way, to become capital cities. Oxford has already received some of the Muses as its inmates, and it is abundantly spacious to receive them all. With respect to the natural scenery of its environs, very much might be said in favour of its being suited as a residence for an artist. The banks of its rivers are especially fertile in subjects for the brush, and though its upland scenery is generally stamped with that mediocrity which seems peculiar to the central counties of England, there are spots here and there which, from their wildness or woodiness, are well adapted for the sketcher. I am sorry to see many of the wild places round Oxford either already enclosed, or in course of enclosure; but what I saw with most regret was, that Bagley Wood had been surrounded with a fence, and placed under a most rigorous _taboo_ to the public in general. Now, there is some excuse for bringing land into cultivation which may be made available for the wants of the community, and can only become so if enclosed; but when the better preservation of game is the only object, to exclude the public from a place where they have been accustomed for years to expatiate and “recreate themselves,” and an intelligent public, such as that of the University;—to exclude them from one of the spots which Arnold mentioned as giving him especial delight on his return to Oxford, and as being one of its chief glories,—this, though perfectly justifiable according to law, is scarcely consistent with that Aristotelian equity which ought to be above law, especially in the neighbourhood of those brought up in his precepts, and whose philanthropy might naturally be expected to be more expansive than that of other men. It appears, however, that this mischief has been done for some time; and the only compensation the public gain is that a fine wide road has been made, which certainly makes the walk round the wood complete—a poor consolation, indeed, to those who, like myself, look upon walking along a road as one of the dreariest duties imaginable, and have an irreclaimable vein of the savage in their composition. Why, to me the sight of the stiff hedges and mathematical drains of Bagley Wood would spoil half the pleasure of shooting there; but, of course, those who have that privilege may say that the grapes are sour. I may mention that on the walk which crosses the railway, and cuts across into the Abingdon road, which leads through Bagley Wood, a large reservoir has lately been made, which in one place is crossed by a bridge, that seems as if it had been put there on purpose to give the best near view of the city. The best distant views I consider to be those about the Hinksey fields, near the spot where Turner, with singular ignorance of the customs of the University, painted gownsmen in their academicals among the haycocks; and at a place near Elstree, called Stow Wood, well known as a fox-cover. But perhaps the most characteristic view of all is that of the towers of Oxford, seen reflected in the flooded surface of Christchurch meadow under a red sky. This view is suggestive of Venice, especially if the boats are magnified by a slight effort of the imagination into sea-going ships, or softened into gondolas. I have mentioned the advantages which an artist might derive from residence in Oxford, alike from the models that might be placed there, the architectural beauties of the place, and the natural scenery. To the second of these advantages would belong the excellent studies of interiors that some of the rooms present. The rooms of one of my friends, which were those at first intended for the Head of the College, are quite a gem in the profuseness of decoration, especially as applied to the ceiling. The halls of many of the colleges are also remarkably fine, as presenting studies of interiors of peculiar magnificence. Occasionally the internal decoration of the rooms themselves, in which individual taste has perhaps taken a wider range than in any other place I know, would assist a painter in his composition. Pictures and engravings, profuse in quantity, if not always good in quality, decorate the rooms of most of the junior members, and a marked improvement has of late years taken place in this matter, engravings from good masters, and really good original pictures by modern artists, having taken the place of trumpery hunting-prints and portraits of the nymphs of the ballet. Other rooms are hung round “with pikes, and guns, and bows,” now obsolete, and seemingly made, at the time of their construction, for this ulterior object of ornamenting a room, which they fulfil so much better than any modern invention. But perhaps the most extraordinary rooms of all are those of a friend of mine, in one of the most picturesque colleges. The whole centre of his room is taken up by a kind of immense Christmas tree, formed by his own labour and ingenuity, on which is hung every imaginable article that would be chosen in an old curiosity-shop from mere oddness in form or nature. It is a rare collection of what the French call specimens of “bêtises,” ironically, as I suppose, considering the extreme cleverness which imagined them all. There are, if I rightly remember, gods from the Sandwich Islands and fetishes from Africa, clubs from New Zealand and bows from Tartary, stuffed birds, pipes of all kinds and sizes, skins of snakes and crocodiles, skulls of men and animals, and everything, in fact, that ever entered into a skull to devise. The walls are papered with engravings, and engravings are hung from the ceiling because there is no room for them on the walls. There is a collection of divers plants, native or exotic, flourishing in stands or trailing over the windows, in each of which is a kind of caravanserai for wild birds (not aviary), for the amiable proprietor does not detain them there longer than they wish to stay, but invites them in by abundant proffers of their peculiar kinds of food; and as he sits or reclines by his fire (for he has abundant facilities for assuming either position) by the motionless silence which he purposely observes—has constant opportunities of watching their flittings and hearing their twitterings, and studying their little habits with the gusto of a naturalist. That such an inventory, which entirely passes my memory to describe, should have been amassed in a single room by any amount of time and trouble, is a marvel to me, only to be explained by the perfect and lotos-eating repose of a college life. Long may our friend enjoy his quaint and instructive rooms! Travellers see strange things, but few can say that they have seen stranger than those that are enshrined in the colleges of Oxford.

You see that I have carefully abstained in what I have said from making invidious comparisons between Oxford and the sister university; nor have I spoken of the universities of the north, with which I am but little acquainted, but which I should imagine to hold an intermediate place between the English and the German system. On the whole, it appears to me that the function of education, comprising theology, philosophy, science, and belles lettres, is to impress upon the mind images of Beauty and Truth, and to enable the mind which has received these impressions to act in like manner through life. If education cannot make a man’s actions truthful and beautiful, he remains to the end a savage, or rather, I should say, the scion of a vulgar civilisation, even if he knows all the poets by heart, or can discourse with the acumen of an Erasmus or a Crichton. That Beauty and Truth are one and the same in that perfect sunlight which our eyes cannot see, and from which all lesser lights proceed, few will deny. But here on earth they may be considered as in a measure apart, and as exciting, each for good in its way, separate influences on the moral life of man. Men incline to one or the other light according to their natural bent or the bias of their education. It seems to me that if a distinction is to be made between our universities, the tendency of Oxford studies is to look at Truth through Beauty, while that of Cambridge studies is to look at Beauty through Truth. It is therefore that I have laid so much stress on the capabilities of Oxford as a school of Art. I confess that I am anxious to gain a closer insight into the nature and life of your German universities. Probably they are with us but imperfectly and unfairly understood. If it be true that the Bursch preserves, under his outwardly rough exterior, any remains of that antique chivalry of thought which is so fast dying out in this country, he preserves a treasure which is of inestimable value, and which ought to be secured to him at any price. At the same time, I think you will allow that our system has certain superiorities of its own, which deserve at least careful study, if not active imitation. We, at least, are successful in affixing an ineffaceable stamp to the character of the great majority, while you seem only to succeed in permanently impressing the nature of a few, and impressing only a limited part of that nature. May you live and lecture many years, Herr Professor; and may your brimming Rhine flow on for ever, free and German as of yore; and may the vine-blight spare the clusters that yield that molten gold which, unlike the morbid production of Australia and California, brings nothing but innocent joy to the soul of your Fatherland. _Vale!_ and believe me,

Your loving friend,
TLEPOLEMUS.

THE ANCIENT COINS OF GREECE.[5]

Father Hardouin, a learned French Jesuit of the seventeenth century, lived to the venerable age of eighty-three years, and died, as he had lived, in the full persuasion that the only authentic monuments which we possess of classical antiquity are comprised in coins, a few Greek and Latin inscriptions, with the Georgics of Virgil, the Satires and Epistles of Horace, and the writings of Pliny and Cicero. Out of these materials he held that certain ingenious “falsarii,” in the thirteenth century, whom he styles the “architects of annals,” compiled those multifarious productions of poetry and prose which we have been accustomed to regard as a most precious legacy bequeathed to us by ancient Greece and Rome. This fact we mention to our readers, not with any view to shake them in their old and orthodox convictions upon the subject, but simply to show them what a vast amount of _matériel_ this learned Father had discovered in the study of ancient numismatics. A coin indubitably presents, within the smallest compass, the fullest view of ancient times that we possess. Though silent, it is always waiting to communicate knowledge; though small, it is always ready to teach great things. “Inest sua gratia parvis,” is the motto of the Cabinet. It would be difficult, indeed, to say what department of ancient lore—whether in mythology, or economics, or politics, or chronology, or geography—may not be elucidated and explained by the study of coins. A series of coins are, in fact, a series of illustrative engravings, of contemporaneous date with the literary works of Greece and Rome, and of the noblest school of art. We may realise much of what we read by turning to designs executed by artists who lived in those very countries, and at that very period. The lordly oak is uprooted by the tempest, the lowly willow is spared. While the temples of the gods and their concomitant myriads of statues have been reduced to unintelligible fragments, those coins which formed the medium of ordinary traffic—the tetrobolus, the soldier’s daily pay—the drachma, that of the mariner—and the tetradrachmon, which, by virtue of the archaic visage of Pallas, with her rigid smile, passed current among merchants of every state and province,—these have remained safe in their hiding-places under the soil, and may be found in nearly the same condition in which the Greeks handled them more than two thousand years ago.

Cities have been built with the express intent of perpetuating the glory of a founder, and after all the founder’s intent is achieved, not by the enduring testimony of edifices and streets of marble, but by that of its coins. Thus the Emperor Augustus thought to immortalise the fame of his victory over Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, by erecting a city on the shores of the Ambracian Gulf, which city he called by the appropriate name of Nicopolis. It was supplied with the usual complement of public edifices; a gymnasium and a stadium were built in a sacred grove in the suburb; another sanctuary stood on the sacred hill of Apollo, which surmounted the city. It was admitted by the Emperor’s desire into the Amphictyonic council, and was made a Roman colony. Sacred games were instituted, accompanied by a sacrifice and a festival, equal in dignity to the four great games of Greece. Coins of the city were struck: and in commemoration of a favourable omen which had presented itself on the morning of the day of battle, a group of bronze statues, representing an ass and his driver,[6] were placed, among other dedications, in the temple of Apollo Actius.

Such were the forward-looking expedients of the conqueror to perpetuate his fame;—and what has been the result?

“Look, where the second Cæsar’s trophies rose,
Now,—like the hands that made them, withering.”[7]

A long succession of ruined edifices, in one part converted into a sheep-pen. In fact, before four centuries had elapsed, a contemporaneous author tells us that the town of Nicopolis had fallen into lamentable decay. The palaces of the nobles were rent; the aqueducts crushed; everything was smothered with dust and rubbish.—The bronze statues of Eutyches and Nicon, after being removed first to Rome, and then to adorn the Hippodrome at Constantinople, were at last melted down by the barbarous Latins on their capture of the city in A.D. 1204. All is gone of Nicopolis except the coins. The coins may be seen in the cabinet of the numismatist, by time as yet uninjured; and we find upon one of them the head of Augustus himself with the description of Κτίστης or founder, and the appropriate figure of Victory holding a garland in her extended right hand.

In connection with this city of Nicopolis, we may mention the fact that one of the most important transactions in Colonel Leake s diplomatic career—namely, a conference with the celebrated Albanian Vezír, Ali Pasha, which led to the ratification of a peace with the Porte in 1808—took place on the sea-beach, near the ruins of the ancient aqueduct of the city, on a stormy night in the winter of 1807. The crafty Vezír, in order to throw dust into the eyes of the French consul, who was watching the proceedings with much jealousy, had previously got up a sort of scene in his presence,—receiving an English messenger, whom he had himself instructed to ask for permission to purchase provisions, with affected sternness,—haughtily refusing to grant his request,—and declaring that the two nations were still at war;—although he had already made with Colonel Leake a private arrangement to give him the meeting that same evening on the beach. As the day declined, the weather became so threatening that the captain of Colonel Leake’s ship was afraid to anchor off the coast; and so dark was the night, that had not Ali himself caused muskets to be discharged, the appointed place of rendezvous on the beach could not have been discovered. At length the boat neared the land, and the Vezír was found seated under a little cliff attended by one or two of his suite, and a few guards. Dr Johnson might seem to have anticipated this scene, in his tragedy of _Irene_, where he describes an interview between the Greek Demetrius and the Vezír Cali in these words:—

“He led me to the shore where Cali sate,
Pensive, and listening to the beating surge.
There, in soft hints and in ambiguous phrase,
With all the diffidence of long experience,
That oft had practised fraud, and oft detected,
The veteran courtier half revealed his project.”[8]

During the two hours the conference between Colonel Leake and the Vezír lasted, the surf rose considerably; and it was not without a good drenching from the rain and the sea, and some difficulty also in finding the ship, which they could hardly have done without the aid of the lightning, that the boat returned on board. The ship then stood away from the coast.[9]

But to return to our subject. Every one who feels a thirst for knowledge, must value coins as the medium of acquiring knowledge: every one who has an eye for grace and beauty, must value them as presenting unrivalled specimens of grace and beauty: every one who is susceptible of the charms of fancy, must love to study the hidden meaning of those imaginative devices, which sometimes, as Addison says, contain as much poetry as a canto of Spenser. Let not the study be condemned as dry and crabbed, for Petrarch was a numismatist. Let it not be condemned as connected with only a bygone and obsolete school of art, for Raffaelle and Rubens, Canova, Flaxman, Thorwaldsen, and Chantrey, delighted to refresh their powers by it. Condemn it not as beneath the notice of the philosopher, for Newton and Clarendon were among its votaries. Say not that men of active pursuits can find no time for it, when you hear of the collections of Wren, Mead, and Hunter.

There were numismatists among the ancient Romans. Admirers and collectors, as they were, of the other productions of Greek art, we should conclude that they were admirers and collectors of Greek coins also, even if we had no direct evidence upon the subject. Suetonius, however, expressly informs us that the Emperor Augustus was accustomed—probably at the Saturnalia—to distribute among his guests a variety of valuable and interesting gifts, and, among the rest, pieces of money—not modern money, but of ancient date—not Roman, but foreign; and some of it the coin of ancient kings. May we not recognise in this description the beautiful coins of Greece and her colonies—the coins of Syracuse and of Tarentum—of the Seleucidæ and other Asiatic kings—of the kings of Macedonia, Epirus, and Thrace? A facetious friend of ours professes to enrol Horace also in the list of numismatists; and we have often smiled at the mock solemnity with which he argues his point. He holds, for instance, that the passage,

“Nullus argento color est avaris
Abdito terris”—

refers, not as we have been taught to interpret it, to the unwrought silver lying hidden as yet in the mine, but to those choice productions of ancient art—Syracusan medallions, for instance, or the rarer tetradrachms of the Seleucidæ—which blush unseen in their subterranean lurking-places, and are kept out of our cabinets by that churlish miser the earth. And he holds that the poet very consistently, in the same ode, assigns the regal diadem, and the laurel crown of virtue, not to the man who is simply master enough of himself not to covet his neighbour’s money-bags,

“Quisquis ingentes oculo irretorto
Spectat acervos,”

but rather to the noble self-denial of that numismatist, who can pass from the contemplation of the well-stored cabinet of his rival without one sidelong glance of envy.

And in that well-known passage where Horace says, in a rather boastful strain, that the fame of his lyric poetry will be more durable than bronze, our friend observes that if the poet alluded to the statues of bronze which met his eye at every turn in the city of Rome, it did not follow that his lyric fame would be of any long duration; for of all articles of bronze the statue was doomed to the earliest destruction, and but few, in comparison with the number of marble statues, have come down to our time. Many a graceful figure which Horace had seen and admired in the palace of Mecænas, for instance, ere many centuries had elapsed was melted down by greedy plunderers, and played its part a second time in the brazen caldron of the housewife. But the medal of bronze survives the wear and tear of centuries full a score. The medal it is,

“Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis
Annorum series, et fuga temporum.”

Our observation has been drawn by some modern writers to the supposed existence of a sacred character or quality in the coin of the ancients. It is the opinion of the most experienced numismatists that the Greek coin was invested with a character of sanctity, arising from the head, or figure, or symbol of some deity which it usually bore; that the ἐικών or image upon it was really and truly an idol. We believe that such a notion prevailed, to a certain extent, both among the Greeks and the Romans. Not that we regard the worship of Juno Moneta as a case in point. We think that the worship of Juno Moneta was the worship of a deity who was supposed to have admonished the Romans that there are other things in the world much better worth attending to than money, and that money would not be wanting to them, so long as the weapons they fought with were the arms of justice. At the same time, there was indubitably a reverence paid to the coin, even down to the Roman times, for the sake of its religious symbol or device. The people of Aspendus, in Pamphylia, professed to hold in such reverence the effigy of the Emperor Tiberius upon his coin, that they found a certain fellow-citizen guilty of impiety, simply on the ground of his having administered a little wholesome chastisement to a refractory slave who happened to have at the time one such coin in his pocket.

It has been thought that the practice which prevailed among the Greeks, of placing a piece of coin in the mouth of the corpse, originated in this notion of its sanctity, inasmuch as it was supposed to insure the protection of the deity, whoever it might be, to whom the coin was attached by the symbol it bore. But we must confess that, for our own part, we still cling to the old story of the fee required by the Stygian ferryman. Hercules informs Bacchus, in the _Ranæ_ of Aristophanes, when he is meditating a visit to the shades below, that he will arrive at a wide unfathomable lake, and that an old man who attends for the purpose will ferry him and his companion across it, on receiving the fee of two oboli. Lucian, too, has a joke about Charon’s complaining that, in consequence of the slackness of his trade, he cannot raise money enough to supply the necessary repairs for his boat. The _mouth_ was so commonly used as a purse by the Greek in his lifetime, that we can scarcely wonder at this method being adopted for his carrying money into the other world with him when dead. Colonel Leake mentions the discovery of a coin of Motya in the mouth of a skeleton in the island of Ithaca, in a tomb of the first century before Christ.

At the same time, although we believe that the myth of Charon was more closely connected with this practice in the minds of the common people than any other consideration, we doubt not that the sanctity of the coin was also taken into account. We find that notion of sanctity prevailing, not only among the Greeks and Romans, but among other nations, to a considerable extent. The Mohammedan coin bears invariably a passage from the Koran, or some other religious text, quite sufficient to insure its reverential treatment by the faithful Mussulman; and we read in Marsden’s _Numismata Orientalia_ of a certain class of very rare gold coins of ancient date, to which the Hindoos avowedly paid religious worship. Of this coin the Rajah of Tanjore was so fortunate as to possess two specimens.

Whether the sect of gold-worshippers is yet extinct is a question which we must leave moralists to settle among themselves. It has been remarked by an accomplished scholar and excellent numismatist,[10] that “gold has been worshipped in all ages without hypocrisy.” That there were many in ancient times who held the coin in reverence for the sake of an indwelling sanctity connected with the symbolic representations which it bore, we fully believe; and that there may be some in modern times who hold it in reverence,—ἀισχρου κέρδους χάριν,—we are by no means disposed to deny.

There is no doubt that pieces of antique coin have been frequently carried in the purse or in the pocket as a sort of charm or amulet; but we question whether this notion of their supernatural power has any connection with the supposed sanctity of the legends or symbols with which they are impressed. We should ascribe it rather to the same feeling which induces some old women, and young ones too, to carry a crooked sixpence in their purse—the charm being supposed to reside, not in any device or legend of the coin, but simply in its curvilinear shape. So in the cases we have just alluded to, the charm lies in the mystery of the coin’s unknown and ancient origin—“omne ignotum pro magnifico est.” Stukeley tells us that, in the neighbourhood of one of the ancient Roman sites which he visited in his “_Iter Curiosum_,” Roman coins were known among the peasantry by the appellation of “swine pennies,” from the fact of their being often turned up by that indefatigable excavator in his search after something more succulent. To the mighty Cæsars this was truly a degradation. But at Dorchester he found the same coins known by the name, assigned with more semblance of respect, of “Dorn pennies,” after some mythical king Dor, whom tradition states to have once resided there. The rustic antiquary is wont to labour under a sad confusion of ideas. The Roman he confounds perpetually with the Roman Catholic. We remember ourselves—after visiting a sort of bi-linguar monument near Hadleigh in Suffolk, which marks the spot of the martyrdom of Dr Rowland Taylor, under Queen Mary—to have asked a passer-by whether a certain antiquated mansion by the road-side had ever been inhabited within his recollection; to which we received the oracular reply that, to the best of our rustic friend’s belief, it had never been inhabited since the Romans occupied it, in the days of Dr Taylor!

This, however, is rather a digression. We learn from Trebellius Pollio that, in the fourth century, the coins of Alexander the Great were supposed to insure prosperity to any person who was prudent enough to carry one of them constantly about his person; and we find this, and all other such notions, strongly condemned by Chrysostom. An Italian traveller tells us that, in 1599, the silver coins found in the fields in a certain district in the island of Crete were called by the people after the name of St Helen; and that the story went that this saint, being in want of money, had made a number of coins of brass, endowing them, at the same time, with such miraculous properties, that the brass, in passing into the hands of another person, was at once changed into silver; and, moreover, that any such silver coin being held fast in the hand, will cure the falling-sickness. Mr Pashley, who visited Crete in 1830, found that the possession of an ancient coin is looked upon as a sovereign charm against maladies of the eyes. In the year 1366, the discovery made by some children at play of a number of ancient coins, at Tourves, near Marseilles, threw the whole community of the district into a state of alarm and consternation. The coins were some that had been struck at Marseilles at that early period when, under the name of Massalia, it ranked among the most thriving colonies of ancient Greece. They bore on the one side a head of Apollo, and on the other a circle divided into quadrants. In the chronicles of Provence, where this discovery is recorded, they are described as bearing on the one side a _Saracen’s head_, and on the other side a _cross_. This was interpreted as bearing some portentous allusion to the Crusades. And the devout writer intimates that, while one part of the community look upon it as an omen of good, and the other part as an omen of evil, Heaven only knows how it will turn out.

We believe that some persons, sedulously devoted to other branches of the study of classical antiquity, are deterred from availing themselves of the aid of coins, by a fear of being imposed upon by forgeries. This is an easy, but an idle mode of putting aside that which we have not courage to investigate. We shall add a few remarks upon the subject.

In the first place, we shall venture to ask these anti-numismatic sceptics, whether they think we ought to cease to read and to admire the dramas of Shakespeare, because it is questionable whether one or two of those which pass under his name were really of his composition?—or, whether we shall shut our eyes before all pictures which pass under the names of the Old Masters, because spurious ones have been palmed off upon the self-dubbed connoisseur?—or whether all autographs of illustrious men are to be condemned as trash, because Ireland attempted to impose upon the public with some that were not genuine?—or whether all currency is to come to an end, because clever knaves have succeeded in counterfeiting it? Everything, in short, which is valuable, offers, in proportion to its value, a temptation to ingenious and unscrupulous men to show their cleverness by imposing upon the world with an imitation of it. The Holy Scripture itself has not escaped.

And after all, in regard to coins as well as in regard to the other subjects which we have mentioned, although forgers may be clever, detectors are clever also. The numismatic phalanx of investigators are more than a match for the “falsarii.” The skill of Cavino, Gambello, and Cellini, has been met with equal skill on the part of the numismatist. The eye that has been accustomed to wander over a well-selected cabinet acquires a power of ready discrimination,—a power difficult to teach by theory, but not so difficult to gain by practice. Solitary instances may occur of a solitary numismatist fondly persuading himself that some clever forgery which he possesses is a genuine coin, but we would not give much for his chance of beguiling others into the same belief. Unwilling he may be to have the “_gratissimus error_” extracted from his own mind, but he never will succeed in engrafting it upon others. Never does the eye of man exert so much jealous vigilance as when it is employed upon the coin of a rival numismatist claiming to be genuine upon insufficient grounds, The House of Lords sitting upon a claim of some peerage in _abeyance_ is nothing to it. We apprehend that scarcely an instance is on record of a forged coin having enjoyed for any length of time, unquestioned, the honours of a genuine one. Nor do we think that there are many instances of a forger’s attempting to falsify history. He generally aims at making his invention tally with historical fact as closely as he can. And if his inventive powers are not at all brought into exercise, but he simply produces a coin which is a _fac-simile_ or reproduction of a genuine one, for purposes of study that _fac-simile_ will be equally available with the genuine coin, and no further harm is done than the abstraction of a few shillings more than its value from the pocket of the unwitting purchaser.

At the same time we would not let the forger go unpunished. Though the evil actually done be small, the intention is bad. We would have him tried by a jury of numismatists. Or if the offence should have been committed in a country where the power of punishing the offence resides in one magistrate, we should say that that one magistrate ought to be a numismatist. It is said that a distinguished archæologist who possessed this power in virtue of his office as Her Majesty’s consul at Bagdad, very recently exercised it by directing that a Jew “falsarius” should be bastinadoed. We applaud his Excellency’s most righteous judgment. The man who had counterfeited the famous sequins of Venice, and had aggravated his crime by doing it badly,—

“Che male aggiusto ’l conio di Vinegia,”

is represented by Dante as worthy of an especial notice among those sinners against laws divine and moral with whom he has peopled the shades of his _Inferno_.

Seriously, however, we think that any clever work of art is worthy of being preserved, and none the less for its having taken in some who set themselves up as judges. Even in Pliny’s time a counterfeit denarius of superior workmanship was sometimes thought cheap at the price of sundry genuine denarii. The tasteful device of Cellini, or of some cunning artist of Padua, must not be thrown to the dogs, merely because it was produced with the intention of rivalling the work of ancient artists, and of testing the acumen of the cognoscenti. Those figures of Cellini, for instance, which some one brought and exhibited to the artist himself as antiques, and respecting which the nobleman who was their proprietor declared, when he saw a smile playing upon the conscious visage of Cellini, that there had not lived a man for these thousand years who could have wrought such;—would not those figures have been worth preserving? And in like manner a coin which, by the excellence of its workmanship, has raised a doubt whether it may not have been really of ancient origin, ought by no means to be treated with contempt, even though it proves to be modern.

The learned work of Colonel Leake, now before us, has supplied a desideratum in the archæological literature of our country. It is the first work of the kind upon Greek coins which has been published by an Englishman, and those of our readers who are acquainted with his character will agree that no Englishman could have been found to do it so well as Colonel Leake. The vast amount of knowledge which he has been laying up for more than half a century, in regard to the literature, the mythology, the political and social history, and the geography of ancient Greece, supplies an infinity of streams which flow over the pages of his work in the form of notes. No longer shall we blush under the well-grounded reproach that all the standard works upon Greek coinage are written by foreigners. Already, indeed, we observe that Professor L. Müller, in his _Numismatique d’Alexandre_, just published at Copenhagen, has made ample use of Colonel Leake’s volume, which must necessarily become a text-book in this branch of Greek archæology. For the convenience of those who may consult it, not only is every ordinary variety of index supplied to the coins themselves, but we observe that, in an appendix, an index is added to the valuable information contained in the notes. We observe, also, in the appendix, a very interesting and learned dissertation upon the weights of Greek coins, in which Colonel Leake traces the Attic didrachmon—which seems to have been a sort of standard or unit in the monetary scales of Persia and Lydia, as well as of the cities and colonies of Greece—to Phœnicia, and from Phœnicia to Egypt. It would scarcely be in accordance with our usual practice to enter into the more erudite part of this important subject, and we shall therefore conclude our remarks by making one reference to the work, in order to show how successful its author has been in availing himself of the light which a coin may throw upon the more obscure portions of ancient geography.

In Colonel Leake’s collection there is a coin, recently brought to light, of a people called the Orthians, bearing the Thessalian type of a horse issuing from a rocky cavern, in allusion to the story that Neptune produced the horse originally by a stroke of his trident upon a Thessalian rock. Now a city, called “Orthe,” is mentioned by Homer in the second book of the Iliad.[11] With regard to the site of this city, there was a difference of opinion among geographers even in Strabo’s time; the majority seem to have identified it with the acropolis of a more modern city, which at that time was known by the name of Phalanna. But inasmuch as there are coins now extant of Phalanna, and of a date contemporaneous with that of Colonel Leake’s coin of Orthe, it is evident that Phalanna and Orthe were two separate and distinct places. The appearance, therefore, of this previously unknown coin of Orthe corrects an error which prevailed among geographers as far back as the time of Strabo. It shows that Phalanna and Orthe were not the same place. Out of the five cities mentioned by Homer in this passage, Strabo had well ascertained the position of three; and Colonel Leake is now enabled to fix the probable position of the fourth. In reference to such facts as this, Colonel Leake observes in his preface that they have an important bearing upon the great question as to the origin of the Homeric poems.

“It seems impossible,” he says, “for any impartial reader of the
_Iliad_, who is not seeking for arguments in favour of a preconceived
theory; who visits the scene of the poem; and who, when making himself
acquainted with the _Dramatis Personæ_ in the second book, identifies
the sites of their cities, and thus finds the accuracy of Homer
confirmed by existing evidence,—to believe that no such city as Troy
ever existed, and that the Trojan war is a mere poetic invention;
this, too, in defiance of the traditions of all antiquity, and the
belief of intelligent historians, who lived more than two thousand
years nearer the event than ourselves. The _Iliad_ differs not from
any other poetical history or historical romance, unless it be in the
great length of time which appears to have elapsed between the events
and the poem; but which time was employed by an intelligent people in
improving and perfecting their language and poetry—in committing, by
the latter, past occurrences to memory; and the principal subjects of
which, therefore, could not have been any other than religious and
historical.”

The study of coins has been very much facilitated by recent improvements in the art of electrotype, which now enables the collector to obtain perfect copies of the rarer and more costly specimens, and to render them as useful to art and literature as the originals themselves. For purposes of reference we have a noble collection in the National Museum, as well as another which, although of much more limited extent, is nearer to ourselves, and therefore more accessible to students on this side of the Tweed, at Glasgow. In the concluding paragraph of his preface, Colonel Leake mentions these two collections in connection with each other; and with that paragraph we shall also conclude our remarks upon his valuable work.

“Augmented as our National Collection has been by the bequest of Mr
Payne Knight, by the purchase of the Bargon Collection, and by similar
acquisitions on the dispersion of the Devonshire, Thomas, and Pembroke
cabinets, it now rivals most of those on the Continent. With the
addition of the Hunterian at Glasgow, which the Trustees of the
British Museum have now, at the end of eighty or ninety years, once
more the opportunity of acquiring, with the assistance of Government,
it would be the richest in Europe.”

TICKLER AMONG THE THIEVES!
EXTRACT FROM AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, WITH A PREFATORY NOTICE.

Poor Tickler! The thing happened in this wise.—But, by the way, before coming to that, it may not be amiss to give the reader some idea who Tickler is:—to wit, a very Skye of Skyes, with a mouth the roof whereof is dark as midnight: his glittering eyes are black as jet; his ears short, his legs none of the longest, but his body is: his tail is a triumph, when fairly spread out; and as for the strength with which it is attached to his body, you may hold him up by the aforesaid tail as long as you can—with one hand. Then his hair is pepper-and-salt in hue, long and curly, and—if I may so speak (though no one but myself and the family will know exactly what I mean by it)—with a kind of silken wiriness. And as for cleanliness, why, he is washed thoroughly every Friday morning, and carefully combed afterwards; and the recurring day of that jobation (to use a word of his own) he is as perfectly acquainted with as the gentleman who performs the operation, and has come, in process of time, even to like the thing: witness how he jumps into the tub of warm water of his own accord, alike in winter and summer, with a kind of alacrity. He makes no fuss about it, except that sometimes, when the soapy water gets into his eyes, they wink at you in silent suffering, which he unconsciously aggravates, instead of alleviating, by putting up his wet paw to rub them! Through this operation he has gone for now nearly twelve years, and a sweeter dog there is not than Tickler. I may indeed almost say as much in respect of his temper, which is excellent whenever he has everything his own way. I have reflected a good deal on the dog’s idiosyncrasy, and think I now know it well. ’Tis tinctured by a warm regard for himself, with respect to the good things of this life; he says, reasonably enough, that if there are good things to be had, he cannot think why he should not try to get them, and like them, since he is formed for the purpose, if he can get them; and as for huge or little hungry dogs in the street, of the plebeian order, he does not dislike to see them enjoying themselves, by way of giving a zest, as it were, to starvation,—if he have no fancy himself for what they have routed out of the gutter. He says he thinks they must often be sore driven; for he has sometimes seen a gaunt dog crunching a dirty bone till he has actually almost eaten it! I am sure Tickler is not without feeling; for one day he was sitting on a chair, with his paws resting on the top of it, near the window, in a warm dining-room, on a blighting day in February—the dust-laden wind without seeming to cut both man and beast to the very bone: and at the foot of our steps there had presumed to sit a dirty half-starved cur, shivering miserably in every muscle, but uttering no sound—neither whine nor bark.

“He starved, and made no sign!”