Literary Direction given to My Numismatic Studies and Choice--The
Wallenstein Thaler--The Good Caliph Haroun El Reschid--Some of the
Twelve Peers of France who struck Money--Lorenzo de' Medici, called
_The Magnificent_--Robert the Devil--Alfred the Great--Harold--The
Empress Matilda--Marino Faliero--Massaniello--The Technist thinks
poorly of Me--My Plea for the Human, Educating Interest in Coins--The
Penny Box now and then makes a Real Collector--How I threw Myself _in
Medias Res_--First Impressions of the Greek Series--My Difficulty in
Apprehending Facts--Early Illusions gradually dissipated--What
Constitutes a Typical Greek and Roman Cabinet--And what renders Great
Collections Great--Redundance in Certain Cases defended--Official
Authorities except to My Treatment of the Subject--Tom Tidler's
Ground--The Technical _versus_ the Vital and Substantial Interest in
Coins--My Width of Sympathy Beneficial to Myself and likely to prove
so to My Followers--Outline and Distribution of My
Collection--Autotype Replicas and Forgeries--Romantic Evolution of
Bactrian Coinage and History--Caution to My Fellow-Collectors against
Excessive Prices for Greek Coins--Wait and Watch--Mr Hyman Montagu and
His Roman Gold, and the Moral--The Best Coins not the Dearest--Our
National Series--Its Susceptibility to Eclectic Treatment--A Whimsical
Speculation--An Untechnical Method of Looking at a Coin--A Burst
Bubble--The Continental Currencies--Their Clear Superiority of
Interest and Instructive Power--The Writer's Attitude toward Them.
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.