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come.

For science differs from theology in this-that every acquisition of science becomes an increasing wealth of mankind, in which the successive generations profit by the betterment of condition, material and mental; while theology appeals only to the individual self, the result of whose effort accrues to that self alone, and can in no way avail to alter the fate of the assertedly birth-guilty mortals still to ensue.

Yet the scientific spirit does not occupy itself solely (as is scoffingly reported) with materialities or temporalities. It has a wider, fuller, higher scope; it holds alien to itself nothing that is of human interest-be it mortal or immortal, the wisdom of the philosopher or the wisdom of the poet Thus does it not exclude, but welcomes as light and as air-the sublime deduction by Robert Browning:

"All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist:

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power,
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour."

It is an inspiriting creed, for-so far as the deepest pointings of science can be adduced in confirmation-it is a true one.

BEN ELMY.

NOTE.-Those who object to the rendering of the word "B'rosh” (v. 2) as “In the movement" cannot refuse the alternative, "In the varying beginning-place," an assertion equally accordant with the astronomic fact. English readers interested in the vast antiquity of astronomical research and knowledge will find the subject excellently treated in Mr. Gerald Massey's monumental volumes, A Book of the Beginnings and The Natural Genesis. These works are "written by an Evolutionist for Evolutionists," and are in their own sphere a contribution as notable and valuable as that of Darwin himself to "the new order of thought that has been inaugurated in our own era." It is matter for congratulation that Mr. Massey is still carrying on his magnanimous though little-recognised labours.

THE ALFRED MEDAL OF 1901.

MEDALS have ever been, with persons of taste, one of the most delightful of studies one of the most engaging of arts, one of the most enduring of memorials, while they become one of the most fascinating of hobbies.

The earliest of the Italian medallions appear to have been executed about the years 1440-50, i.e., at the period of the first uprising of the spirit of imitation of the antique, brought to such perfection by the patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Greek and Roman medals, and engraved gems, had, however, long before engaged the attention of men of learning and connoisseurs; and at last the artists also became alive to the infinite superiority of the ancients, manifested in their so-called minor productions. Medals, in this way, became the study of painters, architects, sculptors, goldsmiths, while in rarer cases (with men of letters) with a success which so infatuated the beholders of these all-glorious treasures, being literary performances as well as a grander development of the moneyers' art, that princes and men of learning, statesmen with churchmen, poets with soldiers, at once showed a kind of universal solicitude for sending down to posterity the lineaments of their faces-while the obverse of medals record those chivalrous actions of the truly great, framed for you and me to contemplate. In this way, Italy alone has the latter part of her history written in bronze. If I mistake not, the earliest known English medal, with the stamp of absolute truth upon it, is dated 1480; it was found in Knaresborough Forest, and is of Italian workmanship. On one side there is a bust, the inscription being as follows: JO. KENDAL . RHODI TVRCYPELLERIVS; on the obverse are found the arms of Kendal, TEMPORE OBSIDIONIS TVRCORVM. MCCCCLXXX.

The study of coins (and hence that of medals) has occupied the greatest talent of every age, while the moneyers of most countries, so to speak, have vied with each other to produce work which should eclipse the chief masterpieces of the rarest examples. Those students who have tried to form a collection of the medals of the Popes will at once endorse the truth of this statement. In this place it might be mentioned that medals with portraits on both sides are rare and of considerable value, while the greatest care must be taken to see if they are not what is commonly called "soldered" medals-in other words, forgeries.

With the study of medals, it is not a question of what age, nor is it a question of what metal (precious or otherwise) that has been the crowning point of any achievement-the joyaunce has always been in that which shall have been produced (in later times) by a Pisano, a Benvenuto Cellini, and a Wyon.

The names above noted (not to the exclusion of the most ancient masters of the Hellenic art) are among the greatest associated with the production of medals, while but few Englishmen are aware that there are extant in these realms of ours certain coins of the age of Cvnobelin (that is if they are not medals), which are the only examples of that period which can be called British. This is the opinion of the famous Pinkerton. Most of these examples have CVNO upon one side, with an ear of corn, a horse, a kind of Janus head, and some such symbol; and frequently CAMV, thought to be the initials of Camudolanum, upon the one side, with a boar and tree, with a variety of other badges on the obverse. They have likewise frequently the word TASCIA upon them, not hitherto explained, though by some writers absurdly supposed to be the name of the moneyer. But in point of fact, the putting of the name of the moneyer on coins was a late practice, quite unknown till the sixth century. It came in gradually, a century after the Roman mints had ceased in Europe, with the empire, and when private persons contracted with the kings for the little mints, they put their names to identify their mintage. These examples are mostly found in copper; but some in gold, silver, and electrum, or a mixture of the two last. One of these has the word VER, whatever that may be, on the reverse, which has been thought to represent Verulamium, and other legends and inscriptions. The British Museum has a very fine collection, formerly the property of Sir Robert Cotton.

On the other hand, while it is not absolutely known if the whole of these examples are types of the coinage of Britain, one thing is certain many coins also occur with legends, which, though meant for Latin characters, and in imitation of Latin coins, are so perverted as to be illegible, and for this reason are generally termed "barbarous medals." Let all this be as it may, how happy are we Britons in possessing those glorious examples which Pinkerton presents to our gaze in plate No. 3 of his work upon medals published in 1808, each of the ten examples there given having more of the medal than the coin about them! If so-called great sculptors would only study the antique instead of inflicting their half-thought out monstrosities upon the eyen of the people at large, there would be less to find fault with in the images stuck up everywhere not to mention that vile thing of our late most dearly beloved Queen and Empress, at Brighton-in most cases something more than a caricature burlesquing the prototype to a painful degree a disgrace to the ground they stand upon.

In this England of ours coins and medals have been so closely associated, from the days of our Roman invaders to the Age of our good King Alfred, and from his epoch to that of our all glorious Queen Victoria, that we shall do well to consider what Cæsar has written down from his observations when he entered Britain.

Speaking of our progenitors, he says: Utuntur tamen ere, ut nummo aureo, aut anulis ferreis ad certum pondus examinatis, pro nummis-they make use of brass instead of golden coin, or iron

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rings reduced to a certain weight instead of (our brass) coins. So the passage stands in the first edition published at Rome in 1469; but it has been miserably mangled in later editions, especially those of Joseph Scaliger, a critic, whose publications cannot be too severely condemned, as he foisted every dream of his own into the text of ancient authors, by way of correction. Cæsar's meaning clearly is, that our ancestors used brass, apparently coined, as a superior metal, in like manner as more advanced nations used gold. And that pro nummis, instead of the brass coinage of Rome (nummus being a peculiar name of the brass sestertius), they used iron rings, examined and reduced to a stated weight. Rude coins of copper, much mingled with tin, are frequently found in England; and may perhaps be the copper coins used by our ancestors, for Cæsar's expression surely infers that their copper was in the form of coins. These pieces are of the size of a didrachm, the common form of the nummus aureus among the ancients.

Though Julius Cæsar made no progress in Britain, and Claudius a century after really began the so-called conquest of this island of ours, yet as all Gaul was effectually under Roman power, the Britons began to admit Roman arts. But the true idea we are to form of Britain, from the time of Cæsar to that of Claudius, is that it was unconquered by the Romans, while our glorious ancestors were sufficiently sensible of the Roman power and its superior civilisation. Augustus was proceeding against it when he was stopped by our ambassadors, who offered such terms (in hard cash, of course), as he accepted. It is extremely interesting to know that Julius Cæsar had engaged to maintain the Trinobantes, of Middlesex and Essex, against Cassivelaunus, his chief foe in these realms of ours, who was king of the Cassii of Buckinghamshire, &c., &c. Cunobelin, of whom we perhaps have so many coins, was king of the Trinobantes, and educated, as it is said, in the court of Augustus. He is mentioned by Suetonius and Dio. As to any king holding supreme authority in Britain at that time, that is a matter of pure conjecture.

Pray forgive this digression on account of its great importance to Englishmen generally, not one person in ten thousand knowing anything about its subject matter. Nor is this the place to discriminate between good and bad, or the proper sort of medals which a virtuoso should collect; the present writer simply wishes to lead yourself onward that you may the better contemplate the glorious achievements of Alfred the Great, the "Truth Teller."

Medals there are of King Alfred, for there are two, both issued in 1849. That which was issued in a public way has upon the obverse, enshrined within a beautifully designed wreath, the following words: "The British Empire, United States, and Anglo-Saxons every where." Above this inscription is a representation of the "holy" dove, while round the edge of this medal runs these words: "Elfred and His Children, 1849," the king's name being on the reverse. Both these medals were designed by the early friend of the present writer, Martin Farquhar Tupper, D.C.L., the author of that wondrous book which few have the courage to study in these last days, the Proverbial Philosophy, the rarer example having on the obverse the heraldic shields of England and America, which Dr. Tupper thought would be of the greater interest to intellectual people for a reason that is obvious. Both medals have the same head of the king, which is taken from the earliest known portrait of King Alfred, preserved in a manuscript in the Cottonian collection (Claud D., vj. s. xiv), the rarer example of these medals having Dr. Tupper's name as the designer of the same, and that of the medallist, W. J. Taylor, of London, on the obverse.

Respecting the conception which the present writer has been the humble means of presenting to your gaze, a very few words shall be

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