THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

CONTINENT OF EUROPE
risen by commerce survived those which had risen by
mere force of arms. Eventually there was a reflux of
imperialism, which in the eighteenth century absorbed
nearly all these states in succession, and even Venice
fell at last in the Great Revolution.
The Papacy remains ;
but its temporal jurisdiction has
passed away for ever ; and the whole of the land, which
once included the most marvellous nationality (for
Venice was nothing less), and gave birth on Corsican
soil to the greatest soldier in the world, is united under
one sovereign and one monetary system, which has been
recently disimproved by the introduction of a nickel
coinage—one of the vilest inventions of numismatic
man.
The almost numberless currencies and descriptions of
money in use among the mediaeval Italians and Sicilians
constitute not only an ample volume of historically,
artistically, and technically important archives, but one
infinitely diversified by the force of local conditions or
political exigencies. The most singular anomaly con-
nected with this portion of our subject is the slenderness
of the interest attendant on the lengthened and enor-
mous series of coins in every metal and of the most
varied denominations issued in the names of the Doges
of Venice between the twelfth and the eighteenth cen-
turies, owing to the monotony of the type and the
poverty of style. Possibly it suited the views of a com-
mercial people to maintain a uniformity of pattern
intelligible to the trader of every country ;
but through
all that long lapse of time we meet, except in the Oselle,
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