THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

THE COLLECTOR SERIES
and collections of medals proper and monetary medal-
lions remained accordingly the principal, even when
they had ceased to be the exclusive, aim of connoisseurs.
In Great Britain the two systems have been usually
kept apart ; but in the continental coinages, down to a
quite recent period, the ancient theory and feeling have
survived.
There is no probability that the practice of accumu-
lating extensive and scientifically ordered assemblages
of coins was one favoured by our remote predecessors
beyond the necessity, prior to the institution of banks,
for storing specie in private houses ;
yet this very need
may have led to the study of types by inquiring eyes,
while, in the interval between an archaic law of exchange
or of calculation by weight, a considerable proportion
of the personalty had its appointed place of custody
on the premises of merchants and others. Traders and
travellers were just the two elements in early human
societies which were most apt, from the exceptional
facilities afforded to them, to look more or less critically
at currencies, and to institute comparisons between one
and another, if they were not sometimes instrumental in
suggesting to those in authority changes and improve-
ments.
The first distinct intimation, however, of a cabinet of
medallic character, that is to say, of medals and coins
selected on account of their illustrative and artistic
value, is associated with a relatively modern epoch and
with an English prince. Books, manuscripts, paint-
ing, statuary, ceramics, bronzes, even gems, had found
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