We have not merely the satisfaction of knowing the faces of some of the chief characters of antiquity, but we can form clearer ideas of their mental and moral qualities, not only from the lines of their countenances, but also from the favourite symbols they used, and the evidence their coinage shows of their relations as rulers to their subjects. Each ancient coin either confirms some fact already known, or adds a fresh one to the treasure-house of discovery, and so by degrees our old knowledge is made more definite, and constantly augmented, not from the disputed statements of writers, often describing events that happened long before their days, but on the unquestionable authority of contemporary state-monuments.
Nor is it history alone in its great periods, as those of the contests of Greece and Persia, of Rome and the East, or the lives of such chief persons as those whose coins we have noticed, that are thus illustrated: the light equally falls upon obscurer times, and forgotten rulers; and as by clearer knowledge we can fill up gaps and supply details, the annals of antiquity are, by the study of ancient money, brought nearer to completeness.
I have but touched upon a single bearing of the subject. I might have shown what a wonderful commentary on much of ancient literature the coins afford, how curiously they illustrate local beliefs and the oldest religion of Greece, otherwise scarcely known to us; how they give us the complete history of a town, its changes of fortune, its rise and decay, sometimes, as in the case of our London for more than fifteen centuries, even telling us what rivers watered it, beneath what mountain it stood, and displaying the buildings and statues that adorned it; or I might have shown how the coinage of the Roman Republic bears types relating to the primitive myths of the City—the Wolf and the Twins, Tarpeia, and the heads of the old rulers and heroes, famous in her legends and her history. I could have spoken of the various schools of Greek medallic art, the rich school of the West, the truthful school of Greece Proper, severe at first as Phidias, animated afterwards as Lysippus, passing, like the school of sculpture which it worthily rivals, from repose to action, the hard school of the East, and the pictorial school of Crete, the ancient home of art; or I could have treated of the coins that illustrate our own annals from those of the once half-mythical Cymbeline, by them made quite historical, to the nobles of Edward III., commemorating his sea-victory off Flushing, and the medals of the great wars of our times. But I have at least proved that the study of coins, rightly pursued, offers a field of rich promise to the lover of history and art, sometimes restoring, from a worn and half-effaced piece of copper, some precious but long-forgotten fact in the history of our race, sometimes showing, in a copy of marvellous beauty, the traits of a master-piece of art, for ages thought to be irrecoverably lost.
ONE MOMENT OF SUSPENSE.
Lord Brougham, in his notes on Paley, observes that it is more than probable that the longest dream occupies in reality but an instant of time. However the events in it may seem to be prolonged, the entire dream is dreamt from beginning to end during the momentary act of waking. Sometimes the subject matter of a dream from its commencement will be found to have direct reference to the act that wakes the dreamer, and unless it be that in such cases the sleeper has the power of foreseeing the cause that will awake him, and of placing before his imagination a series of visionary scenes all conducing to the final event, it would follow that the theory propounded by our great philosopher must be the only tenable one. Of the class of dreams here referred to, the following is a remarkable one as illustrating the hypothesis in question.
I was one of a party on a yachting excursion. The vessel being a small one, the sleeping accommodation was of the scantiest—my bed and bed-room being a hammock, slung in the usual manner, from the top of the small triangular cabin, formed by the extreme bows of the vessel, the entire apartment being only large enough to contain me, my hammock, and a number of hams and dried sausages, dangling like myself from the roof. I was asleep, and dreaming; I had painted a portrait of some one, and had failed to produce a likeness, for which crime I was arraigned before a criminal court on a charge of felony. So far my dream was retrospective—it began in the present tense on my finding myself waiting in the dock for the verdict, which was either to liberate me, or to consign me to an ignominious death on the scaffold. The intelligent jury before whom I was tried, consisted entirely of my relatives and most intimate friends. I was prepared for their verdict, which was—Guilty, with the strongest recommendation that the utmost severity of the law should be visited upon me. The Judge put on his black cap, and sentenced me in the usual expressive phrases, without holding out the least hope of mercy. I left the dock with the officer, and after transacting business with a deputation of photographic artists from the illustrated newspapers, retired to my cell. On the next day two clergymen were announced as coming with the intent of bringing me to a just sense of the enormity of my guilt. On entering they proved to be the only two members of the episcopal bench that I had painted in actual life—the bishop of and the archbishop of . The latter personage was quiet and dignified, but quite equal to the occasion. The bishop of was more demonstrative, in fact, he brought me the first consolation I had had since my arrest: “You are to be hanged, my dear friend. True, it is not a pleasant situation to find oneself in, though in some respects a prominent and, let us add, an elevated one: but it is nothing, nothing in the least; you’ll be cut down; all that you have to attend to is to see that you fall easily—that you have something soft to fall upon when the moment comes.” The two right reverend gentlemen were most assiduous in their attentions to me, in fact, they never left me during the entire period of the two days that elapsed between my trial and execution. I was allowed the best of fare, and the cook at Newgate was an excellent one: in the matter of Beccaficos he was above criticism; his Ortolans stuffed with truffles were unapproachable