Kitabı oku: «The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864», sayfa 11
TIDINGS OF VICTORY
When David's winning son rebelled,
They smote the traitor low,
And thought the monarch would rejoice
At riddance of his foe.
But in his chamber all alone
That kingly head was bowed,
And for the erring Absalom
His father wept aloud.
The ministers astonished stood
At such a burst of grief!
The traitor's death alone could bring
Their sovereign sure relief.
Back to their tents in sullen gloom
The faithful warriors flee;
While still he cried, 'My son! my son!
Would I had died for thee!'
My country's wilful erring sons,
Disloyal men, but brave,
Such tears of anguish now she sheds
Above the traitor's grave!
Amid the pealing notes of joy
For glorious victory won,
Is heard Columbia's piercing cry,
'O Absalom, my son!'
Ye faithful men whose crimson blood
In her defence is shed,
Upbraid her not if thus she weep
Above the guilty dead!
Her noble heart is true to you,
But generous as brave,
She mourns in royal grief apart
For those she could not save.
THE ESTHETICS OF THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL
It behooves every man, toiling along this dusty roadway of life, to seize upon something which he may study and elaborate, that at the end of his journey he may look back and content himself it has not been utterly in vain to himself and his fellow pilgrims. A man with a mania, or, as the Greeks have it, a man with a madness, is the true world-advancer. This madness, when cultured, ripens into talent; if original and inborn, we call it genius, and the subtile anatomists of the French schools prove it by telling us that the brains of geniuses are diseased. The healthy oyster ministers only to the palate. It is the diseased oyster that secretes the pearl for Miss Shoddy's necklace. It is the diseased brain that shines through the ages, lights men on to new epochs in knowledge, and advances the race to the millennial perfection. Immortal Jean Paul, picturing himself in Schoppe, knew this. For what is all of Schoppe's eloquent and matchless buffoonery, compared with his wise oracles, in the mad conflicts with his other 'I,' whom he saw in the mirror of his diseased brain?
Therefore, let every man have his madness, to which he may give his leisure and his thoughtful hours. Let it grow upon him, until it becomes a strong, controlling, natural element, as Mozart grew into music and Haydon into painting, and is ingrained into his very habit and method of life; for it is only thus and then he becomes a master, fitted to lead the van in the world's march. Only, let it be a praise-worthy madness, and one the development of which wilt secure for himself some new fund of knowledge, and add to the store of his fellow men.
It was somewhat in this vein I looked upon a dingy skilling species, with its rudely crossed hammers—a rough coin, bold, sturdy, and rigid as the old Norse character itself which formed the initial of my cabinet—a cabinet which has given to me new ideas of the low-browed Roman and elegant Greek; has admitted me to the arcana of their fascinating mythology; has whispered strange tales of a mummy's perfumed sleep in the shadow of the awful, eternal Sphynx; has taken me to the fall of Grenada, and, bridging over the dark lapse of the ages, has emerged with the resurrection of art into the bloody days of early English history—the grim Puritanic times, when good old John Hull, the mintmaster, regulated the finances of the colonies, and filled his own pockets with pine-tree shillings and sixpences; the horrors of Danton and Marat; marking faithfully each historic change from orient to Occident, and culminating in that latest triumph of the engraver's cunning skill—the Philadelphia Sanitary Fair medal, commemorating for our children and children's children the magnificent benefactions of the people and the self-devotion of the Commissions—Christian and Sanitary—the angels of mercy and charity, scattering blessings in the furrows of war.
The utile and the dulce of the study of numismatics are shown in many ways. Caraccio, Aretine, and Raphael studied the figures on the old oboli and drachmas. So did Le Brun. Rubens was the most conscientious coin and medal gatherer of his time, and applied them sedulously to the furtherance of his divine gifts. Petrarch found time between his sonnets to Laura to make the first classified collection on record, which he presented to the emperor of Germany, with his well-known and remarkable letter. Alphonso, king of Naples, visited all parts of Europe gathering coins in an ivory casket. The splendid Cosmo de' Medici commenced a cabinet which formed the nucleus of the Florentine collection. Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, made a cabinet, and Francis I. of France laid the foundation of the Paris collection—the finest in the world. All artists recognize the value of coins, medals, and medallions. From them they get the model faces and heads of the Greek and Roman, the copies of lost statues, the folds of the chlamys and the graceful sweep of the toga, the eagles and ensigns, rams and trophies, the altars, idols, and sacrifices, the Olympian games, and the instruments of music, mathematics, and mechanics. They reveal the secrets of a thousand antiquated names and ceremonies, which but for the engraver's chronicle must have been utterly lost.
Coins throw additional light upon history. They illuminate the dark passages, clear away the obscurities, and bridge over the gaps. Hugo, in 'Les Miserables,' says men solidified their ideas in architecture before the printed page came from the brain of Faust. He might have added, they wrote their histories upon these bits of gold, silver, iron, brass, and bronze. Vaillant wrote the chronicles of the kings of Syria from a jar of medals, as Cuvier would build up the mastodon and give you the monster's habits from a tooth or a tibia. The Roman denarii give the best idea of Cæsar's well in the forum. The Epidaurian coins with the snake of Æsculapius tell in brief characters how the Roman senate sent an embassy to the great father of medicine to come and heal them of the plague. The migration of the Phocian colony to Asia Minor is succinctly told in the Φὡχη, or seal, which followed the early Mayflower stamped upon one of the earliest of the Grecian coins. The late coins of the Grecian series, with the portraits of Alexander, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus, and others, have lent to the historian a fresh and life-like picture of those stern days, and have been silent but incontrovertible witnesses of the truth of the records which have come down to us. Cymbeline, of Shakspeare, dates back to the Cunobelin of an ancient Saxon coin, struck before Boadicea's time. Who would have known of the Grecian domination in Bactria, long after Alexander's time, but for a casual traveller who found the fact, together with a lost language, upon a series of coins unearthed in that part of Asia? The coins of Alexander fix the capture of Egypt; those of Vespasian, the capture of Judea; and those of Trajan, the capture of Parthia. They were the 'brief chroniclers of the time'—Stantonian bulletins, announcing each fresh conquest.
The coins of the ancient day—for our modern productions can hardly claim the credit—blend artistic grace and beauty. Upon them art made its first and some of its best essays. A cabinet of Grecian and Roman coins is a compact history of art from its inception to its meridian in the culmination of Grecian splendor—and since that time, if we may believe Ruskin, we only approximate, or what is worse, degrade. The gradual decline of art and the decay of the empire are traceable on the Roman series. You may follow the downward steps, until it becomes nearly extinct, to revive, after a period of stagnation, in a new feeling in the quaint but strong and rugged Gothic, the beautiful development of which may be seen in the coinage of modern Europe from the fifth to the fifteenth century. The Farnesian Hercules, the Venus de' Medici, the Apollo Belvidere, and the famous equestrian Marcus Aurelius make their appearance upon the ancient medals. Undoubtedly many of the magnificent designs of Grecian medals in particular are but the types of Protogenes and Apelles, as Houdin's model cast of Washington has been photographed, as it were, upon the Wright medal. The grand Byzantine school of art is nowhere better brought out than on the coins of that period. The details of Constantine's coins are found in the ivory dyptics and those splendidly illuminated Gospel vellums which art-despising monks kneeled upon from the seventh to the tenth century, and which art-loving monks, even in the middle of the nineteenth century, used in the decoration of their monastery halls at Mount Athos.
I come to a phase in the study of numismatics which to many will seem paradoxical—the romance of coins—and pick out here and there a few incidents, which I shall string together, not heeding closely chronological sequence.
One of the saddest pictures in all history is the first mention that is made of money. Sarah was dead, and Abraham was sojourning among strangers in a strange land. He mourned for his wife, and stood up before the sons of Heth, and begged of them to intercede with Ephron, the Hittite, for the cave of Machpelah, as a burial place. Ephron liberally offered him the cave and the field, but the patriarch insisted upon payment; whereupon the Hittite answered: 'My lord, hearken unto me; the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver; what is that betwixt me and thee? Bury, therefore, thy dead.' Abraham weighed the 'four hundred shekels of silver current (money) with the merchant,' and the field and the trees and the caves were Abraham's, and Sarah was buried. The first use of money is the last, and the cave of Machpelah, typical of the last resting place of all men, is the most important because the most imperative use of money. He that hoards and he that squanders, Crœsus and Lazarus, at the end of life, provided they have money enough to purchase their caves of Machpelah, have fortune enough, and more than enough, for they may not carry gold and silver with them through the valley of the Shadow. We buy and sell, we loan and speculate, we hoard our shining wealth as Crœsus hoarded the golden sands of Pactolus in the treasury of Delhi, but when we come to the cave of Machpelah, we leave it at the entrance, and go into the darkness unencumbered.
The earliest and standard specimen of Roman coinage was the as, subdivided almost indefinitely, and originally weighing a pound. This ponderous coin subserved a purpose which our penny does to-day. It had upon the obverse the double-headed Janus, and upon the reverse the keel of a ship, rudely done, but answering the requirements of the light, juvenile gambling known as pitching coppers. Capita aut navem, 'Heads or the ship,' the Roman boys cried, as Young America cries now, 'Heads or tails.' It is an eminently conservative custom, and Master Freddy, as he tosses his new bronze cent, may summarily answer paternal reproof by showing that Master Tullius, two thousand years ago, pitched the as his father coined, and, for aught we know, grew to be a wise emperor and a great man.
Judea is represented upon several coins of the time of Titus and Vespasian by the figure of a woman with flowing hair and bared breasts, seated upon the ground in a posture of sorrow and captivity, above her the wide-spreading branches of the palm, and behind her a stalwart Roman soldier in mail, leaning upon his spear. Thus exactly did the Roman engraver follow out upon these coins the language of the Scriptures. The Psalmist describes this posture in the lamentations of the Jews over their captivity. 'By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept.' Still more remarkable is it that the prophet, in a passage foretelling this identical captivity, likens Judea to a woman sitting upon the ground wrapped in sorrow.
It is not often that coins have been used as vehicles of wit or for plays upon words, but there are examples upon record. Some of the German coins represent in the legends the years in which they were minted. A coin of Gustavus Adolphus also is an excellent illustration of this practice. The legend is: 'ChrIstVs DVX ergo trIVMphVs.' Take the capitalized letters or numerals from the words, and arrange them in their proper order, and you have 1627, the year in which the coin was struck. Upon a coin of Trio Lucretius, a member of the Lucretia gens, who would have remained unknown to this day but for his coin, a case of punning by means of types occurs. The obverse has the head of Apollo; the reverse, the crescent moon and seven stars, or rather triones—the constellation of the Ursa Major. The sun and moon refer to the family name, while the triones are an allusion to the surname. Pope Urban VIII., with execrable taste and questionable wit, upon repairing certain roads, struck a medal with the legend: Beati qui custodiunt meas vias, 'Blessed are they who keep my ways.' The 'speaking types' of the ancient Grecian coins are very curious. The coinage of Rhodes has a rose for a type, which flower bears the same name as the island. The coins of Side have a pomegranate, in Greek, side (σιδἡ); Melos, the apple, in Greek, melon (μηλον); Ancona, in Italy, the elbow, in Greek, ancon (αγκον); Cardia, the heart, in Greek, cardia (καρδιἁ).
The coins of Constantine the Great, 306 A.D., will always remain of peculiar interest, as connected with the early history of Christianity. Constantine, after forcing his brother-in-law, Licinius, from his Eastern dominions, built Constantinople, and made Christianity the state religion. The principal emblem upon his coins is the Labarum, or sacred banner, bearing the monogram of Christ—the letters Χ and Ρ—being the initials of ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ, the angles of which are occupied by the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha and Omega, in allusion to Christ's declaration in Revelation. A rarer type of Constantine's coins has the monogram, and the legend, In hoc signo vinces. The signum was the vision of a beautiful cross in the heavens, which was presented to the view of Constantine, near Milan, during his march against Maxentius. To this cross he attributed both his victory and conversion. These Christian emblems remained upon the coins of his successors until the reign of Julian the Apostate, who removed them and substituted pagan emblems. Nor do they again appear until the accession of Michael Rhangabe (811-813), when the bust and sometimes the full length of Christ is on the obverse, with the nimbus, and the legend, Jesus Christus nica(tor) rex regnantium. Upon the reverse, the emperor, with a singular degree of boldness, is seated by the side of the Virgin, the two holding aloft the banner of the cross.
We come to more modern coins. England and Ireland were in continual trouble about the standard of coinage. On the accession of Mary, she declared the intention of restoring the old standard of silver coinage, viz., 11 oz. 2 dwt. fine, to 18 dwt. alloy; but, instead of that, the new coinage was a pennyweight lower than that of Edward. Nor did it mend matters that her handsome face and Philip's were on the obverse. The wits of the day had many a joke over it; and Butler's sarcastic pen could not omit the opportunity of writing:
'Still amorous, fond, and billing,
Like Philip and Mary upon a shilling.'
The first manifestation of displeasure between the mother country and the colonies was with Massachusetts, of course. The old Bay State was as impatient toward masters then as later in the Revolution against George, and still later with the slaveholders. Charles II. was displeased with the colonists for coining money, which he considered his royal prerogative, and intimated to Sir Thomas Temple that they must be punished, and the business stopped. Sir Thomas was considerable of a wag, and showed the king one of honest John Hull's shillings, on the reverse of which was the pine tree. The king asked him what sort of a tree that was. Upon which Sir Thomas replied that, of course, it was the royal oak, which had saved his majesty's life. The king smiled at the courtier's wit; but it is not reported that he allowed Hull to continue the coinage.
The proverbial misfortunes of Ireland have attended even her coinage, and her troubles in that direction commenced as early as the reign of Henry VII. He coined sixpences for Ireland worth only fourpence in England. Mary issued base shillings and groats for Ireland, and Elizabeth issued still baser ones, while she purified the coinage of England. James I. struck copper farthings of two sizes, that if they failed in England, they might be used in Ireland for pence and halfpence. Charles I. established a mint in Dublin, but, in the confusion attendant upon his death, the Irish lost it. Cromwell gave them tokens in place of coins of the realm; and James II. base silver money, made principally from brass cannon, and even this alloyed stuff was gradually diminished in size. White metal followed, then lead, and finally tin. George I. granted a patent to William Wood in 1737 for coining pence and halfpence for Ireland, but he coined them of smaller size than was stipulated in the patent. Dean Swift, with his merciless satire, drove them out of Ireland, and his majesty, having no use for them in England, sent them to his American colonies. Circulating media were scarce here at that time, and anything in the shape of coins was welcome. George II. did better for Ireland, and gave her honest coins. In 1760 the famous voce populi halfpenny appeared, a company of gentlemen in Dublin having obtained permission to issue them. There was a bit of quiet revenge in this halfpenny. The head of the sovereign, though apparently done in the usual manner of the king's portrait, was in reality a portrait of the Pretender. The coins attained a considerable circulation before the trick was discovered, and then they were suppressed.
Coins have figured in sermons. Bishop Latimer, on the 8th of March, 1549, delivered the following sarcastic sermon. On a previous occasion he had spoken jestingly of the new currency of Edward VI. For this he was accused of sedition, which charge he answered thus:
'Thus they burdened me even with sedition. And wot ye what? I chanced in my last sermon to speak a merry word of a new shilling, to refresh my auditory, how I was like to put away my new shilling for an old groat. I was therein noted to speak seditiously. … I have now gotten one more fellowe, a companion of sedition; and wot you who is my fellowe? Esay (Isaiah) the prophet. I spake but of a little prettie shilling; but he speaketh to Jerusalem after another sort, and was so bold as to meddle with their coynes. 'Thou proud, thou haughty city of Jerusalem. Argentum tuum versum est in scoriam;' thy silver is turned into what? into testious scoriam, into dross,' Ah! seditious wretch! what had he to do with the mint? Why should he not have left that matter to some masters of policy to reprove? Thy silver is dross; it is not fine; it is counterfeit; thy silver is turned; thou hadst no silver. What pertained that to Esay? Marry, he replied a piece of diversity in that policy; he threateneth God's vengeance for it.
'He went to the root of the matter, which was covetousness, which became him to reprove; or else that it tended to the hurt of poore people; for the naughtiness of the silver was the occasion of dearth of all things in the realm. He imputeth it to them as a crime. He may be called a master of sedition indeed. Was not this a seditious fellowe, to tell them this even to their faces?'
The three-farthing piece struck in Elizabeth's reign is often mentioned in the poets. Shakspeare has an allusion to it in King John. He introduces the bastard Falconbridge, ridiculing the personal appearance of his legitimate elder brother, having just before compared him to a half-faced groat:
'Because he hath an half face, like my father,
With that half face would he have all my land.'
Farther on, he says he would not have such a person (body):
'My face so thin,
That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose,
Lest men should say, Look where three farthings goes;'
alluding to the rose which was on both the obverse and reverse of the coin. Beaumont and Fletcher, in the 'Scornful Lady,' show the difference between the penny and three-farthing piece, and inform us of a knavish trick then practised, to impose upon ignorant people the lesser as the greater coin. Lovelass, speaking of Morecraft, the usurer, says: 'He had a bastard, his own toward issue, whipt and thin cropt, for washing out the rose in three farthings to make them pence.'
In England, during the reign of George III., an act was passed to amend an act of the 51st of the king, respecting the gold coin and the notes of the Bank of England. By this act the provisions of the former statute were extended to Ireland, and the notes of the bank there were placed upon the same basis as those of the Bank of England. While this act was passing the House, the following epigram appeared in the public papers:
