W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

The Coins of Europe
II
Undoubtedly interesting and valuable as the Medal, the
Jeton, and the Token severally are as exponents and memorials
of past events and persons, the COIN may justly claim
a higher rank in our estimation and regard as less local, less
special, less flattering ;
as more national, more continuous,
more realistic. It reflects in a greater degree and in a more
faithful manner the condition, progress, and feeling of the
community with which it is identified it
; passed from hand
to hand, from one district to another, from one extremity of
the world, perhaps, to the other extremity ; and
this plea is
strengthened by the policy, first of the ancients, and subsequently
of the continental powers, of blending the actual
currency with the medal and the jeton in that extensive
series of European numismatic monuments which the
Germans term munte-medaUlen, and which served the double
purpose of a coin and a medal by commemorating an
historical incident and by being at the same time stamped
with a value. Among these relics of former days are many
pieces of striking beauty and interest. They belong more
to the German series.
particularly
The number of Coins entitled to rank under a variety of
categories as historical, biographical, or literary records, is
in the class with which we deal. The
peculiarly large
European continent was so subdivided in an administrative
and numismatic respect under the old system that a far
larger proportion of individuals, who attained political
eminence, acquired, ipso facto, a title to a place among rulers
and strikers of money. It is not that we possess finelyexecuted
portraits of great sovereigns only, such as Charles V.,
Gustavus Adolphus, Peter the Great, Charles XII. of Sweden,
Frederic of Prussia, Maria Theresa, and Napoleon
I. ;
but
the privilege of coining, enjoyed by a host of petty feudatories,
has transmitted to us an extensive gallery of
resemblances, the majority (when we have reached the Renaissance)
lifelike in their treatment, which we should not in a