which they lay hid, some of them for thousands of years,-and from which the identical piece of money that once chinked in the purse of men who may have been spectators of the plays of Aristophanes, or combatants in the Peloponnesian war, has been transferred to the cabinets of the nineteenth century in London or Paris.

It seems to be the ordinary experience of travellers, that on the site of an ancient city the coins of that city are frequently to be found, sometimes intermingled with other coins, and sometimes alone. Dodwell found it the case at Delphi, at Orchomenus, at Thebes, at Ægina, and at other places which he mentions. Any particular class of coins are found in the places where they chiefly abounded, and with regard to copper coins and the smaller silver ones, it is clear that they would exist in the greatest abundance in the places where they were issued for the ordinary purposes of currency. Whatever may have been the case with regard to the silver pieces of a larger size, some of which had a circulation far beyond the city or even the neighbourhood to which they originally belonged, the copper coin and the smaller silver were not likely to be found convenient for purposes of commerce, and were not likely therefore to travel far from home. The place in which they were lost or deposited will be, of course, the place in which they are found.

Guided by these considerations, numismatists have learned to pay great attention to locality. In reference to any coins which come to them as 'incognita,' the first question is, where they were found. And Mr. Burgon informs us, that when he could positively and repeatedly trace the finding of an uninscribed or uncertain coin to any given place, it has been invariably proved by subsequent observations (that is, by the discovery of other coins which have inscriptions, or by unequivocal resemblance in type to known coins), that the coin in question belonged to the place where it was found. The Abbé Barthelemy and M. Pellerin were very precise in their instructions to persons employed in searching for coins in Italy and the Levant, that a careful note should be made of the locality in which each coin, or class of coins, was discovered.

Numismatists have sometimes been puzzled to account for the present scarcity of certain coins which at one time were extremely plentiful, and the great abundance of the coins of other places, such as Parium in Mysia for instance, which have scarcely been recognised in history. Into this discussion it will not be expedient to enter. Suffice it to observe, that the abstraction of a million of pieces to be melted down at Rome, may in some measure prepare * expect that such a coin will

not be extremely abundant in modern times; while in the other case, a hoard of money hastily concealed by some terrorstricken burgher is more likely to remain undisturbed for future generations to rifle, in an obscure country town, than in crowded and bustling cities.

The discovery of ancient coins will sometimes give rise to archæological speculations in minds never influenced by archæology before; and the imaginative mind is touched very sensibly by their accidental turning up in distant and unlikely places. Mr. Burgon saw a penny of our own Henry III. pierced and affixed with other coins to the cap of a Greek boy at Thebes. This we may account for by supposing it to have been lost by some English crusader six centuries ago. Cufic coins of an early date have been found in England, -one near York, three among the mountains of Cumberland", and two on the beach at Eastbourne in Sussex. The preservation of ancient coins is owing in some cases to their having been worn in the middle ages as amulets. The coins of Alexander the Great were supposed to possess peculiar efficacy in this respect, and to make the wearer successful in any enterprise which he took in hand.† And in modern times Mr. Pashley tells us that he found in Crete the possession of any coin of ancient date considered a sovereign charm against maladies of the eyes. This superstitious feeling, though it may make the possessor less willing to transfer his talismanic treasure to the cabinet of the collector, must act beneficially as a safeguard against the absorption of the melting-pot.

It has been the complaint of many distinguished scholars from the commencement of the last century down to the present time, that while England is rich beyond other nations in her numerous and valuable cabinets formed by private individuals, she is far behind the rest of Europe in numismatic scholarship, and especially deficient in numismatic publications. Haym, an Italian resident in England, made this observation in the year 1719, in his Tesoro,' a descriptive catalogue of some of the rare and inedited Greek and Roman coins in the English cabinets of the day. He said that innumerable works had been written in France, Italy, Holland, Germany, and Flanders, but in our own felice angolo d'Europa' not one. The same observation was again made, after an interval of more than a century, by the late James Millingen. In the year 1831, after mentioning the noble collections of the Earl of Pembroke, the Duke

See Marsden's Numismata Orientalia, pp. 39. 80.

Dicuntur juvari in omni actu suo qui Alexandrum expressam vel auro gestitant vel argento.' (Treb. Pollio in Vitâ Quieti, xiv.)

of Devonshire and Lord Northwick, the Tyssen, Thomas, Trattle, collections, and, above all, the collections of Dr. Hunter and Mr. Payne Knight, he feels himself reluctantly bound to confess that this branch of polite learning, the utility of which is so generally appreciated by continental scholars, and which has been cultivated with so distinguished success in Italy, Germany, and France, is neglected and almost ignored in England. Each of these writers, then, while he allows that some of our countrymen have taste enough to appreciate the advantages of a well-stored cabinet, and are not prohibited by the 'res angusta 'domi' from indulging their taste, imputes to us a disposition to leave to foreigners the more laborious and unselfish occupation of rendering a collection available to the general extension of knowledge. This not unmerited reproach the work before us will, if we are not much mistaken, do much to remove. The public services of Colonel Leake in Turkey during the first ten years of this century, valuable as they were, were not more useful to the State, than his subsequent literary works have proved in advancing the reputation of his country in the eyes of the scholars of Europe.

Foremost among English numismatists in point of time, as well as most illustrious in station, we must place Prince Henry, the accomplished and unfortunate son of James I. He purchased a noble collection, amounting in number, as Scaliger informs us, to 30,000, of which 4000 were gold, from the Flemish numismatist Gorlæus, who describes it as having been formed by him with infinite pains, and as consisting chiefly of Greek coins. The collection passed into the hands of Henry's brother Charles, who was distinguished as a munificent patron of art in all its branches. Learned foreigners of the period mention Prince Charles's cabinet of coins in conjunction with, and at the head of, his other valuable works of art; and one of them, Charles Patin, assigns to him a place before all the contemporary Sovereigns of Europe in regard to his munificence and taste as a collector. The royal example had its effect upon the nobles of the Court. Villiers, the favourite, the stately Thomas, Earl of Arundel, and William, the high-minded Earl of Pembroke,—were all collectors of coins. To these names must be added Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose collection having been presented by him to the University of Oxford, escaped the plunder and dispersion which was the fate of his Sovereign's in the civil wars. In fact, it is the only one of those early collections which remains intact. Some coins from the royal cabinet passed by purchase into the hands of Christiaa, Queen of Sweden. The Pembroke collec rvived until 1848, when it

At the

fell to pieces under the magic hammer of Mr. Sotheby. commencement of the 18th century the chief collections in England were those of the Earl of Pembroke, the Duke of Devonshire, and the Earl of Winchilsea, the Laudian collection of Oxford, and those of Sir Hans Sloane, and Sir Christopher Wren. And inasmuch as the list of subscribers to Haym's work may be taken as an index of numismatic ardour at the period, our readers may like to be informed that out of eightyseven names nearly one fourth are foreigners, and that two thirds of the English subscribers were noblemen. The literati of England are represented by Addison, Arbuthnot, and Pope; supported by Sherard the traveller and Woodward the naturalist. One name of deep historical interest causes the reader to pause as he scans the list the name of Rachel Lady Russell. The second Duke of Devonshire, whose collection had supplied Haym with many of his subjects, was her son-in-law. The Devonshire collection, like the Pembroke, has been sold in London within the last ten years; and we may trace not a few coins from each of these time-honoured collections as described and engraved by Haym in his Tesoro,' to the cabinet of Colonel Leake.

With regard to Haym himself, we may observe that he was a sharp-witted and intelligent Italian, vivacious and versatile; at one time devoting himself to music, at another to bibliography, and at another to the study of coins. The engravings in his 'Tesoro' were the work of his own hand. He was patronised in succession by two of the great Mecænases of the reign of Queen Anne-Lord Halifax and the Duke of Chandos the Bufo' and the Timon' of Pope's Satires. The collecting of antiques,' including coins, was a fashionable amusement in that day; and among the high-born collectors there were several ostentatious ignoramuses, to whom Addison administered advice, and Pope satire. Haym did his best to enlighten them; and in spite of a few laughable mistakes into which he has been led by his too imaginative turn of mind, we cannot approve of the ill-natured sarcasms which have been poured upon him by Pinkerton. We are quite disposed to acquiesce in Millingen's more friendly remark, that when compared with other works of the same date, his Tesoro' possesses considerable merit, and

* Probably the dispersion of these collections by public sale, and the accuracy with which the value and character of each coin is investigated by the learned on such occasions, has done more for the science of numismatics than if these rich cabinets had remained in the country houses or at the bankers' of their former owners.

that it contributed greatly to the advancement of the numismatic science among his contemporaries.

He has given us, incorporated with his own dissertations, probably the earliest specimen of a descriptive catalogue of his own coins ever published by an Englishman: the writer being Heneage, fifth Earl of Winchilsea, and the coins chiefly Athenian. The nucleus of the Earl of Winchilsea's cabinet consisted of Greek coins collected for the third earl during his embassy to Turkey by consuls and merchants at Aleppo, Smyrna, and Athens; and his son, the present possessor, had made large additions.

In 1746 a thick quarto volume came out in London, consisting of engravings in outline from the Pembroke collection, without any letter-press. The plates had been engraved under the direction of Thomas the eighth earl, then deceased. In 1750 was published the catalogue of the Bodleian collection at Oxford, by Francis Wise; a work which displays considerable learning and criticism, and does credit to the university from which it emanated. The Greek coins, however, in this collection are far from numerous. In 1782 the Greek coins in Dr. Hunter's cabinet were published under the editorship of Mr. Charles Combe, with engravings of a very ordinary character. The Hunterian collection was bequeathed by its owner to the University of Glasgow, the Government of the day having refused to provide room for it in the National Museum. The Duane collection of coins of the Seleucidæ, with engravings by Bartolozzi, and a very useful commentary on the series, was published in 1803. A catalogue of the Greek coins in the British Museum, with engravings by the best artists, was published by the Trustees under the editorship of Taylor Combe in 1814, the chief part of these coins having been bequeathed to the Museum a short time before by Mr. Cracherode. In 1830 the Trustees published a manuscript catalogue, made by Mr. Payne Knight, of the Greek coins which had been bequeathed by him to the national collection, and had come into their possession at his death in 1824: it is more than probable, however, that any such publication of this catalogue had never been contemplated by Mr. Knight himself. Mr. Burgon, who prepared the sale catalogue of the Pembroke collection in 1844, which is the best sale catalogue of coins that ever appeared in this country, has undertaken to compile a new edition of the Pembroke description of 1746, a work for which this gentleman is in the highest degree qualified. In 1852, Mr. Lindsay published a catalogue of Parthian coins, many of them in his own possession and previously unpublished engravings, and a