My own sectional arrangement obeyed my doubtless peculiar training as a man of letters rather than a numismatist, and side by side with my peremptory instruction to myself as to quality I kept steadily in view the importance and charm, as it seemed to me, of comprising in my plan all those coins, which existed in the various series relating to celebrated historical personages and events. The dealers ignore this aspect of the question; they merely concern themselves with what is rare or common, dear or cheap. I negotiated a thaler of Wallenstein; the price was rather high; but I agreed to take it on account of the celebrity of the man. The vendor had never heard of him; he knew it only as an uncommon piece! You purchase a small gold coin of ‘El Reschid’; the hand, which is held out to receive the money for it—not so much over the metal—is not conscious that it may have been actually through those of the striker, the hero of the Arabian Nights, nor forsooth does he care. No one will probably offer a shilling more for it for such a reason.

It may occur that an insignificant, ill-struck coin of base metal appertains to Milon of Narbonne, or Roland, nephew of Charlemagne and the Orlando of the poets, or to Richard of the Lion Heart; one examines its credentials, and yields it a place of honour. I obtained in a lot of Italian copper a small quattrino, as it is called, with Lav. Medices Dux on one side and Pisavr on the other: what was it but money issued in 1516—and that year alone—by Lorenzo de’ Medici, called the Magnificent, as Duke of Pesaro? It may be equally predicated of Arthur of Bretagne, the possible prototype of the hero of Romance, Arthur of Little Britain, and of Robert of Normandy, called Le Diable, that their personal surpasses their numismatic distinction; for in the latter way they survive only in monuments of the poorest material, aspect, and style. Nor is it very different with the coins of Alfred the Great, of Harold, who fell at Hastings, of Henry Beauclerc, of Stephen, of the Empress Matilda, in the English series, and with such continental celebrities as the hero-Doges of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, Marino Faliero, and Francesco Foscari; or as King Robert of Sicily, Gaston de Foix, Joanna of Naples, Massaniello.

Yet, on the contrary, there are splendid medallic evidences of others both in ancient and modern times; and it appears to redeem a cabinet from the imputation of being a portrait-gallery of Illustrious Obscure, if we leaven its contents with the effigies of men and women, whose names are familiar to all fairly educated people.

This principle, then, collaterally influenced me in my selection, and made me anxious to omit no record of consequence illustrating a historical individual or incident. I aimed at approximating to a collection of medals, as far as the Coin would permit. I also affected the earliest examples of each country, bearing a note of the year of issue and of the current value; and altogether my project became quite powerfully tinctured by my prepossessions and lessons as a book-student. I looked with comparative lukewarmth at the technical side, and I apprehend that I enjoy an indifferent repute among my more learned contemporaries, who pride themselves on their familiarity with mechanical and official details. All these points are excessively important and interesting in their way; and I have entered into them a good deal in my two numismatic publications. I was disposed in my private capacity to regard the human constituents of these remains of former ages; and I promise that it will repay the trouble of investigating the illustrated works of reference, in default of possessing the objects themselves, by shewing how similar motives have swayed rulers and States from the outset in regulating the costume of their coinage, how they have habitually made it a political vehicle, and how the annals and fortunes of the country are to be read on its changing and varying face as in the pages of a volume.

It is the more to be lamented on that account, since it may not suit everybody to collect coins, that the pictorial feature in nearly all numismatic undertakings is the most imperfect and misleading and in the old-fashioned or cheap books amounts to little better than caricature. I grant that there is the proud lust of ownership; but the discs of metal are of no real relevance outside the story, which they are able to tell us, if or when we are qualified to read it. All the rest, in a high sense, is but bullion, is it not?—and the criticism emphatically applies to heterogeneous assemblages of obsolete currencies, formed without taste, and held without fruit.

This feeling, and the persuasion that the most extensive and long-established collections in the world are more or less incomplete, actuated me, so soon as I had graduated far enough to lay down regulations for my own use and to decide once for all on treating Condition as primary, and historical and personal interest as covetable succeedanea, which lightened and seasoned the rest.

Most of us have heard, among the famous Greeks and Romans, of Philip and Alexander of Macedon, Darius of Persia, Pyrrhus, Cleopatra, Julius CÆsar, Mark Antony, Augustus, Nero, and the Antonines; and it is customary for school-boys to explore the recesses of the penny box in shop or on stall in quest of pieces of bronze bearing the effigies of these ancient celebrities. School-boys have done this during centuries, and many of them have done nothing more. But here and there the child is father to the man, and the proprietor of a celebrated cabinet has it in his power to range over a life-long past wealthy in profitable and pleasant recollections, and to exhibit to his friends as a curiosity the humble piece, which first seduced him.

In the present case the pursuit dated from a maturer period, and I was debarred from such a privilege. I have learned much from coins; but I came to the study with a fair tincture of preparatory knowledge, and while I entertained becoming reverence for the great names of antiquity and of the Renaissance associated with it, I was old enough to be aware how many other claims it had on our attention and regard.

I turned to the ancient Greek series, I recollect, with the vague impression that it consisted of objects, which appealed to all persons of taste—an impression, which had been experienced by thousands before me, and which is perhaps generally due to conversation with more erudite acquaintance rather than to books. Works of reference come later. They did so with me. I had overheard talk of the grandeur and charm of design, the antiquity, the familiar names and myths; and perhaps someone let me see one or two, which struck me as curious, or some engravings of the school, which preceded autotype and other allied processes.

The end of it was that I bought a few inexpensive examples of Lincoln, and afterward, when it came to the turn of the Roman money, I was attracted by the beauty and cheapness of the Family or Consular series and by the ease, with which the second and third brass were obtainable. But it demanded a longer time than I care to own to enable me to perceive the affinity between the republican silver denarii and the productions of the professedly Hellenic school. If I had mingled with collectors, or consulted books or experts, I should have learned far more quickly and perfectly my self-set lesson. But I have never been gregarious or clubable; and I pursued my own way with the result that I committed an abundance of mistakes, yet not half so many as I deserved from my unbending persistence in depending on my personal researches and judgment.

This dogged opinionativeness and hard tone of mind have proved disadvantageous through life. I quitted school much more ignorant, I dare say, than I needed to have done, because it was not my cue or bent to comprehend what the teachers delivered, or to relish the methods, which they pursued; and the single point, which I brought away from my attendance at a twelve months’ course of lectures on Law and Jurisprudence at the Inner Temple, was the persuasion that in a particular line of argument, in which I happened to follow the lecturer, he was wrong. I hold a very kind note from Dr Phillimore, thanking me for my correction.

One of my numismatic illusions was the uniform low rate, at which the Roman consular denarii and other coins of that class, as well as the imperial currencies, could be secured in course of time. I soon found that a piece had only to be rare, or in gold, or rather exquisitely patinated, to stand out in high relief, and make a serious inroad on one’s resources. I have been fairly watchful and enterprising during the best part of twenty years, and my Greek and Roman collections still await several clear desiderata, not because those desiderata are scarce and expensive, but because they are typical. I possess about 400 pieces, perhaps, in all metals; five-and-twenty more would render my two series substantially representative. I shall get what I want by waiting. What I have suffices meanwhile to gratify my sense of that artistic and ideal genius, for which my elders had prepared me, so far as the Greek and Roman consular go, and my feeling for all that Rome has left behind it in grand personalities, splendid achievement, and records of thought and custom.

It cannot be fruitless or irrelevant to repeat that the magnitude of the most famous collections is chiefly owing to the presence of numberless varieties and sub-varieties of coins—even of unimportant ones. A man makes a principle of accumulating every year of the bronze money of the present reign, or farthings of every conceivable description, or maundy money. Cui bono? This is a course of policy which should be reserved for the public institution and the numismatic chronicler. I have a gold stater, perhaps of Philip of Macedon, an electrum one of Cyzicus or Lampsacus, a silver tetradrachm of Alexander the Great, and another of the Athenian Republic; I do not covet all the more or less slightly variant examples, which may exist. It is different, where the coin is remarkable in itself, and the type is distinct, as, for instance, in the contemporary and posthumous money of Alexander of Macedon, in the progressive improvement in the currency of Athens, in the specimens of Syracusan medallic art, which shew the stages, through which it passed; and in the pieces, which have preserved to us the likeness of such celebrities as Cleopatra, Julius CÆsar, Mark Antony, and which vary in certain physiognomical details. Here there is a more or less intelligible plea for repetition or redundancy. But in avoiding the admittance of practical duplicates I flatter myself that I have avoided a troublesome and costly error, which punishes you in two ways—when you acquire and when you realise. I have sometimes speculated why it is that I, for one, shut up books on coins after a short consultation and turn to the things themselves—the tangible realities. There must be somehow a cross with the magpie in one’s blood. The only kind of publication of a numismatic complexion, which strikes me as endurable, is that which is written on sympathetic lines, in a broadly appreciative temper and spirit. The dry calendars compiled by official experts, and the catalogues of auctions, are hard reading. They are mere lexicons or printed transfers.

Yet when I endeavoured to follow in the footsteps of one or two earlier writers, who gave wise prominence (as I thought) to the human and living interest resident in coins of all ages and countries in former times, I was reproved by the learned as too literary in my style, although in my larger book I afforded ample scope to the technical aspect of the question, and merely asserted my view by making it an independent section in distinct type. But the true cause of offence or disagreement was and is my presumption as a layman in trespassing on the preserves of Tom Tiddler.

It has been objected to my unusual width of range that it precludes full justice, as it is the fashion to call it, to any of the series. The reply to this, however, is obvious, and has already in fact been given. Unless a private cabinet is formed with a special eye to the official study of a group of coins or of the monetary products of a region, the object should be, not exhaustive treatment, which in the first place is impossible, but eclectic, which tends to familiarise the holder with the policy and progress of all nationalities in all parts of the globe from time to time in rendering media of exchange objects of interest, instruction and beauty, as well as of use.

A man emerges from the latter plan with a clearer and broader appreciation of the subject and its manifold bearings than he does, if he draws the line at a country, at a period, or at a type. It may be a just source of pride to be able to say that you are the existing repository of so many examples or varieties, of which no one else can boast the ownership; but, looking at the ultimate aim, it is not clear where the solid advantage lies.

My appurtenances in this direction embrace: 1. Greek and Roman; 2. Continental; 3. English and Scotish; 4. American; 5. Oriental. The last-named occupy a space proportionate to the narrowness of their appeal to my sympathy. The money of the ancients, more especially that of Greece, when one casts one’s eyes on its portraiture, symbols, legends, fabric, and costume, I treasure as everlastingly impressive testimony to the force of soil, climate, and social and religious conditions, and as the basis of every essay of any pretensions in collecting. The difficulties and dangers are unusually great, as the disparities of estimated value are great; and the liability to error and deception are manifold. The wholesale official system at home of multiplying autotype copies of rare and valuable pieces originated in a sound idea; but has been carried too far, and forms an inducement to impose reproductions on inexperienced persons already perplexed by encountering casts and other forgeries; and then, again, the Greek and Roman series are a constant mark for the ingenious foreigner, who has busied himself, as we have all heard, ever so long since in fabricating for enthusiastic admirers of the antique the almost unfailing lacunÆ in their cabinets. Some classes of coins are more subject to falsification than others. The Athenian gold and the Bactrian silver are very favourite game for the Gentile, the Jew, and the Mahometan alike. They forget their religious antagonism in a fraternal community of aim.

I have referred to the Bactrian coinage as having been extensively forged. But there has strangely accumulated, since those days, when the surviving number was almost computable on the fingers, a vast chronological monument, disclosing to our eyes a marvellous Oriental legend of mighty rulers and long, prosperous reigns, coins their only historians. I was favoured by the Museum authorities with an early glance at the magnificent purchase from General Cunningham of his Bactrian numismatic collection for £3000, by virtue of a special parliamentary grant; and this has at once placed our national cabinet in a most satisfactory and enviable position in this respect.

Of the money of upward of thirty kings of this region—the ancient Affghanistan—the silver is now copiously represented, but not so the gold or the copper. I tell the story of the 20-stater piece, in the most precious metal, of Eukratides, King of Bactria, in my Coin-Collector. Of the copper or bronze I have long owned a very beautiful example, probably of Heliocles; in my state these latter productions are peculiarly rare. Never was such a case of Time drawing Truth out of a well; and we have not reached the end of the matter yet. There will be further discoveries.

Here is a conspicuous instance of the peril attendant on giving extravagant prices for coins of supposed rarity. There are among the Bactrians silver tetradrachms and smaller denominations, which can be bought for fewer shillings than they once commanded sovereigns. My obolos of Demetrius, for example, cost 15s.; it is valued by Mionnet at £16. But you must exercise particular caution in this direction for the reason, which I have assigned. I shall be entirely satisfied, if I succeed in procuring a selection affording a competent idea of the prevailing character and costume of the whole, of which the earlier reigns are immeasurably the more desirable; a complete sequence is out of the question; even the British Museum under the most favourable conditions does not possess it—perhaps never will.

I really think that with the poorer coin-collector it is the same as with his analogue in the book market. The most beautiful and most interesting objects in the Greek and Roman coinages are well within his means of attainment, if he chooses to wait and watch, provided that he cares to do what the present deponent did, do his best to eke out his deficiency of resources with acquired knowledge and discrimination. In that case he may rise one morning the owner of an assemblage of these delightful and educating remains, and may ask himself the question, in what manner and degree it differs from those most famous and most frequently quoted in our numismatic records. He will find that what he lacks in common with all, who have not bottomless purses, are just the rare denominations or values, or types, of which he may probably possess examples substantially identical—perhaps in superior condition.

Take the Roman gold of the late Mr Hyman Montagu. That gentleman suddenly conceived it to be his mission to become master, not merely of all the really interesting coins in that metal and series; but it was peremptory that he should outdo everybody else, and be able to proclaim that he had every gold piece struck by every obscure and insignificant ruler down to the fall of the empire; and I believe that he was gratified. He could plead nothing for his project beyond its completeness; and that very feature was its weak point. Think how infinitely preferable it is to select the best; they are to be had at moderate prices; they appeal to everyone, who has a fair degree of culture; and they occupy less room. The rarities are usually of poor work and fabric as well as of princes, who reigned just long enough to stamp their names and effigies on a circular disc of gold. Mr Montagu, however, felt bound to draw a broad line of distinction between humbler aspirants and himself; and he erected this monument to his memory.

It is much the same thing with the Greek in all its varieties and ramifications, of which, no less than of the Roman, I furnish a comprehensive sketch in my Coin-Collector. The money of ephemeral rulers and governments, or high and unusual denominations, like the Syracusan medallion or 10-drachma piece form the trying part and aspect of an undertaking. I soon discovered that I could command even with a slender purchasing power all that was essential to enable me to comprehend the monetary story of the most remarkable, and one of the greatest, empires of the ancient world. When I turned over the pages of the Carfrae, Ashburnham, Montagu and Bunbury catalogues, it was easy to perceive how these grand collections assumed such bewildering and fatiguing proportions; and I saw to my surprise that, rather than forego a particular item, condition was often waived.

I thought that I discerned, for private connoisseurs as distinguished from great institutions like the British Museum, a radical error of judgment and policy here, and I congratulate myself on having avoided it. Condition, on which I shall have something more to say by-and-by, I could and can understand; and as I have never regretted losing a dear coin, I have never regretted letting a poor one pass. But I have seen with complacency my rich friends snatch out of my hands some things, which I should have been content to have at my estimate; and if I am patient they will fall to me another day. I take what comes, and am thankful. At one of the numerous Montagu sales a piece realised £2, 10s. I dare say that it passed through one or two hands; but it became mine at last for half-a-sovereign.

I must change the scene. I was never led away in respect to the money of the United Kingdom, not even by patriotism, so far as to find funds and accommodation for every constituent part of every series within these lines. If I were not an Englishman, I should declare unreservedly that a less interesting, more monotonous, and worse executed body of material than the coinages of England, Scotland, Ireland, and their dependencies, with certain emphatic exceptions, does not exist. It has asked all my loyalty to overcome an instinctive repugnance to the uncouth abortions struck as currency by our British, Anglo-Saxon, and many of our Anglo-Norman, progenitors. You may contemplate the entire gallery and succession in numismatic books, with autotype reproductions of these caricatures. A heavy proportion of them are barbarous and feeble imitations of Greek, Roman, and mediÆval patterns. Perhaps in art and style they resemble most closely the Gaulish and Visigothic series. If we reserve one or two types of Offa of Mercia and Alfred the Great, the commonest are the best, because they were struck under the authority of sovereigns, whose power was established. I put to myself the question at a very early stage, how many representatives was it necessary for me to assemble before me of these classes or schools of production? The answer is readable in the presence of fifty or sixty Britons, Saxons, Danes, and Normans; and I have no courage to swell their ranks. When I look at them, I can find nothing to justify the cost of their maintenance but the weak little sentiment, that these pieces of gold, silver, copper, or tin passed from hand to hand, when the part, where I am a dweller, was a dark, swampy forest, with a few squalid huts dotted here and there, and that one or two of these bits of money may have been in the pouch of Cymbeline, or Krause (vulgo Carausius) or Alfred. In fact, I have a silver penny of the royal Cake-Burner, which weighs two grains more than any other known; it was Colonel Murchison’s; but possibly it had previously belonged to the king himself!

Seriously speaking, our native currencies acquired their value and rank only, when the French and Low Country types began to attract notice and emulation; and I should be satisfied with drawing the line at Edward III. as a commencing point and at Anne as a finishing one. The view is by no means original; I have met with several, who averted their eyes from the peculiarly humble and uncouth beginnings of the British people in this way; and the late Mr Montagu parted long before his death, on the ground of their dearth of interest, with the whole of his Hanoverian collections.

Between these extremities there is undeniably a rich field for choice. Numismatists have always, I apprehend, regarded me as a heretic, for the simple reason that I attached, in the absence of some specific ground, no importance to mint-marks or to minor differences. I have accustomed myself to take a coin in my hand, and estimate it on its merits. I am able to see what ruler or State it represents, its period, its style, its value. It may bear on its face a striking portrait of some illustrious personage—a potent sovereign, a distinguished soldier, a great lady—of whom the lineaments are nowhere else extant. It may be money of necessity, narrating to us, as fully as it can, a tragic or a noble story. It may be the first piece which was struck by a famous individual or place, or the last—perchance out of church or college plate with the original border of a dish remaining to commemorate a crisis. All these and other similar characteristics are broad and clear. But I have always been impatient of the stress laid by experts on an inverted letter in the legend, an added or omitted dot, or some such fantastic and puerile refinement.

These minutiÆ do not constitute the primary use and significance of the coin as a source of study and instruction. A cabinet formed on a practical principle yields the best and most lasting fruit. You have only to scan the pages of the numberless printed works of reference to become aware that in the English and Scotish series the slight variations among products of the same issue are interminable, and individuals are found to enter with avidity and at a lavish outlay into such trivialities. Not I. From the remotest period of our own history we have coined in England itself only seventy denominations in all metals; and I computed in my Coin-Collector that about 1530 pieces would substantially represent all the different reigns and clearly distinct types of the United Kingdom, not including the Anglo-Gallic money which is not very voluminous.

Whatever may be thought of the practice of acquiring virtual duplicates in the more ancient currencies, its extension to the Georgian and Victorian eras is absolutely unreasoning and futile. There is no plea for it on the score of art, history, or curiosity. It is only the other day, that patterns and proofs of George III. and IV., William IV. and her present Majesty were carried to prices, which would have secured in the aggregate some of the finest and costliest examples of Greek workmanship or the great rarities and desiderata in the English series itself—the Oxford and Petition crowns, the florin of Edward III., the triple sovereign of Edward VI., or even the half George noble of Henry VIII. But the bladder has been pricked, and the nonsensical craze has visibly subsided. It had its rise, no doubt, in competition among two or three wealthy, but poorly informed, gentlemen, who soon grew tired of a desperately expensive and foolish amusement. Naturally the artificial quotations brought to light hoarded specimens; and supply and demand changed places.

My British division follows the same system as the others. The chief part, requisite for my plan, is in hand; a small residuum has yet to come; and I must wait for it.

That side which took, and has held, my fancy more powerfully, was the Continental. What impressed me was its infinite interest, diversity, and curiosity; what recommended it was its unfamiliarity and comparative cheapness even in the choicest condition. There was a time, when the foreign dealers, and some of our own, were prepared to part with nearly all the coins in the respective metals at a tariff, which was far more consonant with my means than the tall figures ruling elsewhere through the generous rivalry of my affluent contemporaries; and a five-pound note still stands one in better stead on this ground than on the English and Scotish; but I hold a certificate of approbation in the shape of a slowly upward tendency on my own special lines, and I rejoice that my wants grow fewer.

Between the relative merits of the British coinage and that of the European continent there is no actual standard of comparison, especially when it is borne in mind, that some of the best of our native examples were produced by foreign engravers. I confidently anticipate that in the early future the money of the various political divisions of Europe will appreciably usurp the position at present almost monopolised among ourselves by our own money or that of the ancients. I hear it objected, that the continental class is so immense and so fathomless. True, it is; but when you regard condition, that difficulty ceases to operate, for you have only to stand by, and pick the best, and you will find that about 1 in 50 is the proportion of pieces worth having. The total in the Boyne sale (1896) was estimated at 25,000; and I doubt whether there were 250 real prizes (duplicates excepted) from beginning to end.

The coins in the two superior metals laid side by side with those of Great Britain of the same period almost invariably excel ours in every respect, and there is an abundance of high denominations both in gold and silver, which the continental houses know fairly well how to appraise: grand old pieces of 5 and 10 thalers in silver and of 10, 20, 40, and 100 ducats in gold. I have generally viewed these bijoux from a respectful distance. But as a beginner I was forcibly struck by the magnificent copper coins of early date and careful execution, which now and then occur in irreproachable state at rates, of which no one can reasonably complain. At the price, which was commonly demanded a short while since for a pattern halfpenny of George III., you might have half a hundred of them in course of time. I have personally experienced a far larger measure of trouble in meeting with satisfactory specimens of all epochs than in the English or even Scotish sections; but it is such a much vaster field, and some countries are more difficult than others. Where expense is not a consideration, a system of correspondence with all the leading centres and occasional visits in person are to be recommended; but consignments on approval form a tolerable substitute, and are rather exciting—with a tendency, I have found, to disappointment. The happiest moments are apt to be between the receipt of the parcel and the disclosure of the contents. Yet I have to confess myself very greatly indebted to Mr Schulman of Amersfoort for his supplies. London is of very slight use; you must keep in touch with the continent; and unhappily, within the last few years, the continent has grown sensibly dearer for fine copper. The quality of indifferent stock held by the trade everywhere must be incalculable—I must have waded through a ton or so.

The Italian copper series, taking up the thread, as it were, where the Roman and Ostrogothic rulers let it fall, is customarily regarded with special tenderness and respect, and is certainly entitled to rank high, as the work, during the finest period of art, of celebrated engravers. But the other sections set before us very persuasively their claims to attention; and it was this rather perplexing competition for notice and choice, which led me—which leads me to-day—to accord admission only to the bearers of the highest testimonials. That is a very drastic method of exclusion.