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

476 The Coins of Europe
of their superior workmanship and style ;
and the varied
types of the louis are curious. Mention has been made of
the quinzain, presumably a piece of I 5 sols but no
; example
of this reign seems to be known.
The reign of Louis XVI. offers no features of special
importance until we come within measurable distance of
the borderland between the old and new regimes, when we
meet with some striking types significant of the political and
constitutional changes which impended over France and the
king himself. A series of patterns, proceeding from a
variety of sources, marked the interregnum prior to the
establishment of the consulate, and a second one exists of
proposed patterns for the currency under the personal rule
of Bonaparte.
A glance at the first fruits of the mint under Louis
XVI. side by side with the coins on which he is presented
to us as a man prematurely stricken in years, might be alone
sufficient to point to some contributory agencies but the
;
unhappy king appears to have grown corpulent at a very
early age, if we may trust the portrait on a piece of 6 sols,
struck at Paris in 1783, before the Revolution broke out,
and when there could be no power, perhaps no wish, to indulge
in caricature. This was in reality the prototype, however,
of the republican bust so familiar to us all ;
and the
same realistic tendency, as distinguished from the more or less
idealised resemblance, manifests itself in the louis of 1788.
Amid the confusion and vacillation naturally attendant on
so stupendous and unprecedented a crisis, we cannot be surprised
to find, on the one hand, such an extraordinary piece
as the 30 sols of 1 791 in copper, with the portrait to left and
Louis X VI. Roi des Francois, and on rev. the seated figure of
Liberty, surrounded by democratic emblems and the legend
La Nation. La Lot. Le Roi ; or, on the contrary, the twofold
movement in the coinage for reconciling parties by
reissuing from the old dies the youthful head of 1774 and
by preparing a pattern, very carefully engraved by Vasselon,
of an ecu, where the features of Louis are more prepossessingly
rendered, but the reverse is on the new lines.