OF FORGED COINS.* In forming a collection of ancient coins the amateur must make himself acquainted with the aspect of forged coins, which are of two distinct classes; first, those which are the works of ancient forgers, against whose base imitations of the public money severe laws existed as early as the time of Solon; and, secondly, those modern imitations of ancient coins produced by the ingenuity of unscrupulous artists who, ever since the fifteenth century, when ancient coins first began to attract the attention of the curious, have been engaged in this fraudulent branch of manufacture, reaping a rich harvest from the unwary or uninformed collector. Human ingenuity is so prone to evil, that scarcely had the art of coinage been developed, and money of that convenient form put in circulation, than the labours of forgers commenced; and their productions are frequently of execution quite equal to the real coin, and much more ingenious in fabric; for the base metal is so skilfully plated with its thin coating of gold or silver, that even at the present day pieces are continually found still perfect; and I myself, very recently discovered a beautiful silver coin, which had long been the pride of a fine collection, to be an ancient forgery, as ancient as the true coins themselves. Its value is of course decreased by this discovery, but its beauty is undiminished, and it must still form a very interesting monument both of the artistic and manufacturing skill of the period. Indeed, so beautiful were some of these fraudulent imitations of the coin, that they were, as specimens became rare, highly prized by the ancients themselves. There are ancient forgeries existing even of the early coins of Ægina; and Herodotus mentions other forgeries of coin as a common offence, but does not appear to believe in the wholesale forgery of gold money attributed to Polycrates, who is said to have defrauded the Spartans by a large payment of base gold coin. There are, however, existing forgeries of the early Lydiant gold coins, bearing the fore Beauvais and Pinkerton have both interesting remarks on forgeries of ancient coins. part of a bull and a lion, which were in circulation in many parts of Greece at that time, and which may have formed part of the very pieces with which the crafty Polycrates cheated the rugged Spartans, less accustomed to the interchange of money. Roman forgers were less skilful than the Greeks; and most of their forged money is merely cast. On a recent excavation in France, a complete set of Roman forging implements was discovered, consisting of clay moulds, &c. It is thought that in some instances the Roman cast money of the late periods of the empire is not forged; but that this mode of fabric was adopted in some of the military expeditions, or sudden changes of government, when a more rapid mode of producing money than the usual one was desirable. Such casts, however, whether the works of the state or of forgers, are worthless to a collector, unless they bear some rare type, or have some special ground of interest. Of modern imitations of ancient coins, those of the Paduan forgers are the most celebrated; but long before that time the trade had commenced. Guillaume du Choul, a French writer, and one of the first who studied and wrote upon the long-neglected monuments of Greece and Rome, caused two medals to be engraved in his work, as illustrations of the Roman coinage, which have since been proved to be modern forgeries. Antoine le Pois, also, who wrote about the same time, and whose book is a fine monument of the typography of the period, cites, as antique, several coins, which were evidently of modern fabrication. The most skilful of modern forgers were Jean Cavino and Alessandro Bassiano, whose productions are generally described as the Paduan forgeries, Padua being the city where these skilful engravers exercised their profession. In the beginning, they had probably no intention of deceiving, but merely intended to reproduce beautiful copies of things so rare; but the opportunities of gain, by selling their work as really antique, was too tempting, and these two engravers became associated in the trade of forgery about 1540. The common forgeries, now all termed Paduans, are obvious cheats enough; but those of Cavino and Bassiano are too well done to render detection easy; one of the only modes of detecting them being through the means of the inscriptions, the letters of which are generally squatter than in the originals. These Paduan forgers were very careful in taking for their subjects rare reverses, and hey even invented others, taking their subjects from the best known historical events, or fables of antiquity. Michael Dervieu, a Frenchman, afterwards established himself at Florence, where he very successfully counterfeited all kinds of ancient coins; but took up more especially the department of Roman copper, and found the manufacture a very profitable trade. Carteron, in Holland, produced beautiful forgeries, which frequently pass for Paduan. Congornier afterwards appeared at Lyons. This forger restricted his inventions to coins of the thirty tyrants; finding that single branch of the business sufficiently profitable for his purpose. The greater portion of his forgeries of these coins were pure inventions, for those known to be genuine are but few; only eighteen of even the names of these thirty tyrants being mentioned by historians. Laroch, of Grenoble, made copies of some of the most rare coins of the Pellerin cabinet, which he sold as originals. In Madrid, a great number of imitations of this description were struck; a portion of which were purchased and deposited as real, in the cabinet of the Infant Don Gabriel. In the great period of numismatic furore for ancient coins, which was at its height from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century, Stutgardt had its workshops, and Venice her ateliers, where denarii and quinarii of the Roman emperors and empresses were fabricated by the thousand. They may be generally known by a thin and flat appearance. Galli, at Rome, struck quinarii of the emperors of the East; and Becker, who died at Hamburg as recently as 1830, engraved a vast number of false rare coins, of various sizes. He struck even the curious incused coins of MagnaGræcia; and not content with imitating, he invented ad libitum; some of his inventions being very curious, though the most easily detected. But though the scientific skill of a few experienced collectors was not to be imposed upon, the ignorance of the great bulk of amateurs furnished Becker with plentiful purchasers. A catalogue of this ingenious artist's disgraceful forgeries was published by Sestini in 1826, and completed by M. Clouet, of Verdun, in 1827. This catalogue will be very useful to collectors who have not confidence in their own judgment; for M. Becker was a very industrious gentleman. As the taste for Greek coins grew up and strengthened, a person named Caprera established a manufactory for them at Smyrna, and his productions, when ready for circulation, were buried in likely localities in the neighbourhood, to be afterwards accidentally dug up by innocent little boys, who disposed of them, at good prices, to unwary strangers, astonished and delighted to see these beautiful monuments of antiquity deterré under their own eyes. A person named Saintot, at Paris, struck recently some excellent imitations of denarii, only, it is said, for amusement; but several manufactories of the same description, though on a small scale, exist at this moment in Paris, complaining sadly of the bad times. A complete list of Paduan forgeries is published in "Le Cabinet de l'Amateur et de l'Antiquaire."-Paris, 1842. An ingenious mode of imposition is also known, by which rare, in fact unique coins, are produced without forgery at all; it is effected by sawing two moderately-fine coins in two, longitudinally, and then soldering the reverse; say, of the Nero, to the back of the Antoninus, and of the Antoninus to the Nero; so producing, at one operation, two rare coins, a Nero, and an Antoninus, both with reverses, never seen by the most experienced numismatist. With these cautions to the amateur I close my attempted account of the Greek and Roman coinages; trusting, that however imperfect the work, it may convey much useful information to the student, and induce him to exhaust more completely the mines of interesting and delightful knowledge, which I have done little more than suggest to him. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE COINAGE OF MODERN EUROPE, ILLUSTRATED BY THE PROGRESS OF THE ART IN GREAT BRITAIN. THE COINS OF ENGLAND, AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF THE ROMANS, TO THE INVASION OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. I HAVE already spoken of the class of coins circulating in Spain, Gaul, and Britain, previous to their subjection to the Romans. The Roman coinage circulating in Britain was of the same character as that of the rest of the western portion of the empire; and of Roman coins, bearing types referring especially to the British portion of the empire, I have spoken, in treating of the coinage of the reigns in which they were issued. At the time of the final fall of the Western Empire, the Roman coinage had dwindled, as stated in another place, to a scanty issue of most wretched copper, or rather bronze, of the smallest dimensions; and on the establishment of the new kingdoms on the ruins of the fallen empire, no improvement took place, and apparently very little new coin was struck, with the exception of the gold trientes of the first Gothic kings of Spain, and those of the Merovingian race of Frankish kings, till the beginning of the seventh century, when the silver pennies, and still smaller pieces, of modern Europe appear. These were long the only coins known, till gradually, and after several centuries, the groats were issued, then larger pieces; and, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, the crowns and half-crowns of silver first made their appearance. The first gold appeared in the thirteenth century, and the first genuine copper coin of modern Europe not until much later. With this brief outline of the general course of modern coinages, I may at once proceed to describe that of the |