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

296 The Coins of Europe
archaic work, its attainment and long preservation of the
highest excellence, and its
gradual decline to the modern
mechanical and unheroic standard.
The former distribution of Germany into circles, long
after the date when it had been formed into a separate
kingdom by the election of Conrad I. at the Diet of Worms
in 8 1 1- 1 2, while to a large extent it is a mere matter of
history, necessarily governed during centuries, and through
nearly the whole of the most important period of our inquiry,
the operations and incidence of the coinage, as it affected the
relationship of the varying component parts of that great
fabric to the Crown and to each other. At three
political
distinct epochs the entire German territory was apportioned
into four, six, and ten circles. In 1387, into Upper and
Lower Saxony the Rhenish Provinces
; ; Austria, Bavaria,
and Suabia ; Thuringia and Franconia. In 1438 the
divisions were changed and multiplied, and embraced the
temporal or ecclesiastical sovereignties of Brandenburgh,
Saxony, Cologne, Wurtemburg, Salzburg, and Mayence. But
in i 5 i 2 a readjustment, which with two or three important
exceptions lasted down to the date of the Confederation of
the Rhine under Napoleon, was effected by the Emperor
Maximilian I., and the country constituted thereafter ten
circles :
Austria, Bavaria, Suabia, Franconia, Upper and
Lower Saxony, Westphalia, Upper and Lower Rhine, and
Burgundy. The loss of Burgundy, the erection of Prussia
into a kingdom in 1701, and the dismemberment of Poland,
were three agencies which sensibly affected the balance of
Europe but so ; long as the antique constitutional framework
and sentiment survived, personal and even dynastic changes
did not, for the most part, interfere with the internal
and left
organisation of Germany or of the German Empire,
matters of executive detail unmolested ;
and if this was true
of the portion of the imperial dominions under more immediate
central control, it was apt to be more so of those at
a distance of the Netherlands, Italy, and Sicily. The
resistance of the monetary economy, vocabulary, and general
complexion to political disturbances and disruptions, contri-