In the land of Goshen the Israelites formed a nation by themselves, and, like the Welsh, were under foreign dominion; yet, as the Welsh have done, so may the Jews also have preserved their own language, though in the house of bondage, their prison-house, in the land of Shinar.

Return we now to the fact, that Coinage first commenced in Judea, 393 years after their return from Babylon; and, reverting to the suggestions of common sense, what were they likely to do? And what should we ourselves do, were we to commence coining, for the first time, A.D. 1851? If the Jews had ceased to use the Samaritan character and language in Babylon, why should they place it on their coins four centuries afterwards? They could have no value for what they had voluntarily abandoned; and, had they abandoned the Samaritan in Judea, it must have been voluntarily, as they were free agents as to the language they used there. In 1851 we surely should not go back either to old English or to Saxon for the inscriptions on our first Coinage. We do indeed continue the absurdity of Latin inscriptions on English coins; but then, childishly silly as our conduct is, we only copy the folly of our forefathers. In this day we should never originate anything so hopelessly stupid as to engrave an inscription, which is to give information, in a language totally unintelligible to 99 persons out of 100, by whom that information is presumed to be required, and for whose edification it is placed on the coin.

Also, when we consider the types and terms placed by Simon Maccabeus upon his coins, they all appeal to the national and religious feelings of the moment; and common sense and common policy would imperatively suggest their being conveyed to the people in the clearest manner, which could only be in the common vernacular language of the country; and, as the inscriptions are in the Samaritan character, I have always felt assured that Samaritan was the character in use. We find the Samaritan inscriptions continued to the coins of the last descendant of Simon Maccabeus, King Antigonus, B.C. 40.

The change of inscriptions by the Herodian sovereigns, from Samaritan to Greek, was clearly state policy, and consequently does not infer any change of language in the nation. But when the nation again became intensely, religiously, and entirely Jewish in

their uprising against the Romans, under Bar-cochab, as their ancestors had been under the Maccabee family against the Syrians, the same policy appeals to the same feelings, and, with Jewish types and in Samaritan characters, the coins of Bar-cochab declare to the Jewish nation "The liberation of Jerusalem" under the banner of another" Simon." All the motives which induced Simon Maccabeus to address the people, through the coinage, in the clearest and most intelligible mode, must have pressed infinitely stronger on Barcochab. Simon had brought the nation through its struggle of life and death, and had then only to keep alive the feelings that had upheld them in the conflict; while Bar-cochab, like the prophet Ezekiel in his vision of the valley of dry bones, had to re-create and re-animate the dead. Jerusalem and the temple had been more than sixty years reduced to ashes, and the very foundations of Sion had at the same time been ploughed up by Titus. It was not the mere official imitation and continuance of an established, though senseless custom, like the Latin inscriptions on the English Coinage, for it was now 170 years since money had been coined in Judea with Samaritan inscriptions. If, therefore, the Samaritan character and language had not continued to be the national character and language of the people, what inducement could Bar-cochab have had to make use of it on the Coinage, the types and inscriptions on which were addressed solely to the political and religious feelings of the Jews, while to the Romans they were as so many standards and declarations of rebellion? His object was to raise the people in arms, and he made the Coinage one mode of addressing them; but this he could only do by addressing them in their common, vernacular, and everyday tongue. We have the proof in the many Greek and Roman coins of the Emperor Trajan, which have come down to us with the types and inscriptions of Bar-cochab, that he made this address to his Jewish countrymen in the Samaritan character and language: and to me this appears clear and decisive proof that in the reign of Hadrian, A.D. 134, the Samaritan continued to be the written and spoken language of Judea.

Numismatists are sometimes asked of what utility is their pursuit? My answer is, that coins are national records, and frequently enlighten the darkness of national history; and if the view which I have taken of, and the inferences I have drawn from, the Jewish

Coinage, are correct, the coins of Judea prove that the Jews brought back from Babylon the same language they used when led into captivity, and retained the same when they were finally expelled from the land of Judea by the Emperor Hadrian.

Believe me to remain, my dear Sir,
Yours truly,

J. B. Bergne, Esq. &c. London.

RICHARD SAINTHILL.

POSTSCRIPT.-While this paper was in type, having referred to Mr. Akerman's Numismatic Illustrations of the New Testament, I find that he assigns a coin to Archelaus, a son of Herod the Great, the inscription being "Ethnarch," which title Archelaus obtained from Augustus, whereas his father's titles were, first "Tetrach" and then "King;" and I think Mr. Akerman's correction of its previous appropriation cannot be disputed. Mr. Akerman mentions coins of King Herod with the helmet and Macedonian shield. He has also engraved one of King Herod's coins, having on one side a helmet. between two palm branches, and over it a star (a most remarkable type, as Mr. A. remarks, when the great event of the first Herod's reign is taken into consideration); on the other side of the coin is, apparently, an altar with the fire kindled.

SUGGESTIONS FOR PLACING ENGLISH INSCRIPTIONS

ON THE COINAGE OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRE

LAND.

[In a Letter to Sir GEORGE CLERK, Bart. M.P., Master of Her Majesty's Mint.]

W. Wyon, Esq. R.A. to R. Sainthill.

MY DEAR SAINTHILL,

Her Majesty's Mint, Oct. 3, 1845. BEFORE Sir George Clerk left London we had some conversation on the subject of changing the inscriptions on the Coinage into English. I told him that at the commencement of the reign of William the Fourth I urged upon the Master, Mr. Herries, the propriety of putting the inscriptions into a language that was understood; and the more so as our Coinage was not international, but merely confined to Britain and her colonies. I agree with all your arguments, and there would be no difficulty so far as the arrangement on the coin is concerned.

At the time I proposed this alteration I was warmly seconded by Sir F. Chantrey, and Mr. Herries was induced to take the opinion of the Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst on the subject; his Lordship, however, determined that it could not with propriety be adopted. The reasons I understood were, that the only way of expressing what was so simply done in Latin, would be by putting "William the Fourth, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith." The difficulty was to express in English the comprehensive word " Britanniarum." Perhaps you are aware that on the coin of India English is used, simply "Victoria: Queen:"

Yours sincerely,

W. WYON.

SIR,

Cork, Jan. 19, 1846.

OBSERVING in the newspaper that you are returned to London, I beg to thank you for your very obliging letter from Scotland, and to lay before you the inscriptions as they now are in Latin on Her Majesty's Coinage, with inscriptions for the same coins in English; and I flatter myself that, when leisure allows you to give them the

benefit of your consideration, you will be of opinion that the sense is at least as clearly given in English as in Latin, and that the coins allow full space for these English inscriptions, even according to their present arrangement. And, if longer inscriptions were necessary, they could be placed on the Coinage by continuing the letters to a complete circle, as was customary on the Roman imperial coins; specimens of which, from the mints of Claudius and Trajan, lie before me, and which I would inclose to you, if I was able to forward this letter by a private hand: through the post the chances are 99 to 100 that they would not reach you.

It appears to me to be consistent with common-sense that an inscription, more particularly on a coin,* to be useful, should be in the language of the country where it is struck, and is to have its general circulation; and when this is self-evident, as I think it is, as to legends on coins and medals, I require no precedent for doing that which is right and proper; and how many people, I would ask, are there out of the twenty-eight millions of English, Scotch, and Irish, who people the British Isles, that can read Latin?†

But precedent, so far as it goes, is entirely against using any other language than that of the country where the coins are struck. Greece and Rome are the highest classical authorities, more particularly on Coinage, as theirs are the finest that the world has produced. On Greek coins we have Greek inscriptions, and on Roman coins Roman inscriptions, except in the Greek provinces; and the

MONUMENT TO WOLFE AND MONTCALM, QUEBEC.-" A monument has been erected to the memory of these brave men. It is an obelisk copied from some of those in Rome, and bears two Latin inscriptions, which to ninety-nine out of every hundred who look on it are unintelligible. There is nonsense and pedantry in this. The inscriptions should have been in French and English." ."-Men and Manners in America, vol. ii. p. 355.

"In respect to these legends or inscriptions being meant for the information of all sorts of persons, learned or unlearned, they should be in the language of the country; yet this common-sense proposition has found favour only within the last half century, Latin terms being almost universally used. Russia appears to have been the first of Christian nations to employ a vernacular legend. The United States used this style from the first. In 1791 republican France began to inscribe her own language on her coins. The example has since been followed by most nations of Europe; but England and Austria adhere to the old system.

"The coin should declare its country. This is always done with gold and silver, not always with billon and copper. Sometimes it is so abbreviated or Latinized that the common reader can learn nothing from it."-From A Manual of Coins, by Eckfeldt and Dubois, assayers of the Mint of the United States.