THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

CONTINENT OF EUROPE
tive and superb examples of numismatic art abound.
The Leicester series is apt to be interesting to English
folk ; it extends from 1586 to 1659, or later (long
after the Earl's death), and consists of the thaler and
its divisions of various dates. The coins of William
the Silent and of William Henry of Orange, afterward
William III. of Great Britain, command attention.
Italy possesses manifold titles to our special consideration
as having been the cradle of the ancient Roman
coinage, as having passed through a succession of
political revolutions, each of which left its numismatic
traces and lessons behind it for our instruction, as the
seat of the alleged patrimony of St. Peter, which was to
outlive all revolutions, and embracing within its fron-
tiers Venice and Florence, and as the only region where
the finest productions of German medallic art were
eclipsed. Subsequently to the fall of the Western
Empire the invasions in turn of the Ostrogoths, the
Lombards, the Franks, and the Germans, gradually
tended to bring the Italian coinage in its fabric and
feeling into closer touch with that of the Scandinavian
and Teutonic communities of Northern Europe. The
Ostrogoths themselves had largely adopted the mone-
tary style and module of the nation which they entered
the peninsula to replace ; but those who came after
them, especially the Franks and the Germans, changed
the prevailing type, and substituted that which formed
the standard one throughout Western Europe during
many centuries. The Ostrogothic and Lombard series,
the former in all metals, the latter in gold and silver
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