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THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

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CONTINENT OF EUROPE<br />

tive and superb examples of numismatic art abound.<br />

The Leicester series is apt to be interesting to English<br />

folk ; it extends from 1586 to 1659, or later (long<br />

after the Earl's death), and consists of the thaler and<br />

its divisions of various dates. The coins of William<br />

the Silent and of William Henry of Orange, afterward<br />

William III. of Great Britain, command attention.<br />

Italy possesses manifold titles to our special consideration<br />

as having been the cradle of the ancient Roman<br />

coinage, as having passed through a succession of<br />

political revolutions, each of which left its numismatic<br />

traces and lessons behind it for our instruction, as the<br />

seat of the alleged patrimony of St. Peter, which was to<br />

outlive all revolutions, and embracing within its fron-<br />

tiers Venice and Florence, and as the only region where<br />

the finest productions of German medallic art were<br />

eclipsed. Subsequently to the fall of the Western<br />

Empire the invasions in turn of the Ostrogoths, the<br />

Lombards, the Franks, and the Germans, gradually<br />

tended to bring the Italian coinage in its fabric and<br />

feeling into closer touch with that of the Scandinavian<br />

and Teutonic communities of Northern Europe. The<br />

Ostrogoths themselves had largely adopted the mone-<br />

tary style and module of the nation which they entered<br />

the peninsula to replace ; but those who came after<br />

them, especially the Franks and the Germans, changed<br />

the prevailing type, and substituted that which formed<br />

the standard one throughout Western Europe during<br />

many centuries. The Ostrogothic and Lombard series,<br />

the former in all metals, the latter in gold and silver<br />

139

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