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dividing the accidental from the real. How deeply would he have felt the difference of the plodder, who, professing nature as his model, puts before him a flower, and copies every corrosion and chance stain upon its leaves, (not that such art may not have its place,) and the great artist, who, seizing the type of the plant, paints that upon his canvass, and leaves the rest in the subordination in which it belongs. When the admirable artist of the White Captive said that in every man and woman he tried to see their face and form as it would have been if it had descended from Adam, still characteristic, but free from the marks of sin and sickness, he was talking pure Platonism and true art.

What, again, is more profound than his perception of the fatality attaching to matter? With it the law of cause and effect is absolute; if we know the data, the results are inevitable; only self-determining vital centres are free from this necessary consequence and fix on this or that for no cause except that such was their will. Matter represents the limits of our thoughts, and is the evil necessity which the free soul, inclined to virtue so far as it is free and still wise, must overcome. Heaven, the world of the absolute ideas and the pure spirits, cannot, consistently with the goodness of God, contain evil, and its existence is consequently found to be in this gross matter, veiling the ideas and deadening the perception of the spirit. Hence the philosopher's is, in Plato's estimation, the highest pursuit among mortals; for what is philosophy but a preparation for death, or the anticipation of the time when we shall be rid of those blinds of the flesh which interpose between us and wisdom.

If we could see to-day the telescope constructed by Galileo, with its clumsy tube and simple lenses, ground, perhaps, by his own hand, with what reverence should we handle that primitive instrument, with what feelings should we gaze up through it at the satellites of Jupiter first discovered by its means! But if we desired to study the mysteries which perplex the astronomer of to-day, we should very certainly seek an instrument which the latest perfections of science had best adapted to our needs. We should not, therefore, detract from the glory

of him who first revealed the mighty powers hidden in what previously had been known only as an amusing toy; nor would he be less great because his successors, following in his footsteps, had attained results which he could never have anticipated by means of instruments which had superseded his own. We are too apt to forget those accumulations of new material, and consequent correction or annulling of old results and methods in every branch of knowledge, which, with the steady advances of civilization, each eager generation continually makes.

Galileo's telescope, doubled, is our opera-glass; and as it has been with the astronomer, so also has it been with Plato, the explorer in different realms. While he remains the original interpreter of certain primary facts and relations of the human spirit to the central and eternal ideas, he still bears to us the same relation that a self-made man does to one who has been bred in the midst of riches, and educated from his earliest youth; the circumstances of the former may even have aided to display and develop his natural powers, (and genius at any rate needs but few materials to work with,) but certainly the latter starts with an advantage which can never be annulled, whatever may be his inferiority in natural parts.

We start far beyond the place where Plato rested. He lived too early to be able to avail himself of the history of the fluctuations in philosophy, to aid in shaping his own conceptions of philosophical truth; and far more important, and what should continually be taken into account in estimating his views, it is only in these last days that anything like an allcomprehending science has embraced the universe, showing unerring law prevailing in every department, generalizing and systematizing every phenomenon of physics, and every vagary of the human mind. Plato, having raised to an exquisite perfection the instrument of dialectics which he received from his master, was led thereby to the most noble and remote of his discoveries, though scientifically imperfect as we have seen -the Theory of Ideas. When he had laid this result before the world he had done all that with his facilities was possible, and was of necessity compelled to wait for a more extended ex

perience, and more perfect instruments to exceed his farthest vision and embrace in a wider science his boldest generalizations; and when he undertook the construction of a Republic from the few data which he could attain, he was laboring as vainly as one who should endeavor to find the successive actual positions of the moon from his mathematical knowledge, being ignorant of the solar perturbations, and the motion of the nodes and apsides; and yet, owing to the comparative obscurity of the subject, we see his crudest ideas discussed to-day with a gravity of which the Ptolemaic system is now equally worthy.

In quitting this subject, on which free criticism as well as praise has been used, I should wish my last words to be those of the reverence and love with which this great man and his master always fill me; it seems to me that on the subjects that are the highest, and also the most difficult, few final results are yet attained; I do not feel sure that each man's own experience is not always to be that which must ultimately settle his belief, but to see a really great and humane spirit fighting the same fights with ourselves, and always preserving an ideal faith and a manly and heroic conduct; doubly recommended, moreover, to our hearts by the fact of his having only himself to rely on, and no accepted faith that killed a doubt it did not answer; the spectacle, I say, of these two grand old heathen, the master the inspired fighter, the scholar the inspired thinker, fills my heart with love and reverence at one of the grandest sights the world can boast.

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ARTICLE II.-ROMAN FAMILY COINS IN THE YALE COLLEGE COLLECTION.

SINCE last February, over eleven hundred coins have been given to Yale College, which, with some sixteen hundred previously owned by the institution, have formed a collection which for its size is quite valuable. About seven hundred of these are ancient coins, of which a brief catalogue was published in the number of the Yale Literary Magazine for June, 1860. A historical survey of one department may give to those not familiar with numismatic science, a view of the value of the collection, and the relation in general of coins to history. We select accordingly the Roman family coins which particularly call for such an account, as they are arranged in the catalogue, not chronologically, but in the alphabetical order of the Gentes. The original of every coin described in the following list, is in the College Cabinet, except those of Scipio Asiagenes, Aemilius Paulus, and Lollius Palikanus, of which there are sulphur copies, taken on Mionnet's plan, from fine specimens in a European collection. The interpretations are taken chiefly from Eckhel, and where a letter or figure is obscure on our specimen, the description has also been taken from him.

The series of Roman family coins which belongs to the republican period and ends with the reign of Augustus Cæsar, is distinguished from the consular coins of the same period, in having an individual's name or the name of a family, while the consular coins have only ROMA. Our cabinet happens to have only silver money, the minting of which was introduced B. C. 269, while gold was sixty years later. That the earliest coinage of Rome was copper, and that of Greece proper was silver, is not only declared by historians and indicated by the use of aes in Latin and úpyúptov in Greek for money generally, but is attested by existing remains. The coining was done in a workshop attached to the temple of Juno Moneta on the Capitoline Hill, chiefly under the direction of triumviri monetales.

*Cohen's recent work has not yet been received.

The first of the consular denarii bore the head of Pallas wearing a winged helmet, and on the reverse Castor and Pollux on horseback. The early prominence of these brothers as deities of the people is thus set forth by coins, as it is in the language by the primitive forms of swearing, edepol, mecastor. The numeral x was frequently put on the obverse to indicate that it was a piece of ten asses. In place of the Dioscuri, the other divinities, often in a biga or quadriga, whose horses were usually at full speed, occur early as varieties of the reverse (nummi bigati et quadrigati.) The quinarius, which at first had the same emblems as the larger coins, was after a time specifically distinguished by a winged figure of Victory in different attitudes holding a garland (nummus victoriatus.)

When the names of persons began to appear, the old types were retained. The Dioscuri are seen on denarii of C.ANTESTI M.ATILI. SARAN

IVS

CN.LVCR.TRIO

Q.MINVC.RVF.

NAT.

The following names appear with the biga, C.ALLI M.CIP

C.PVLCHER-T.CLOVLI

C.CATO

D.SILANVS.L.F two specimens

P.SERVILI.M.F. L.TITVRI; and these with the

quadriga L.ANTESTI.GRAG

LICINIVS.C.F.

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CARB

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C.VIBIVS.C.F. PANSA. The figure of victory is on the quinarii of P.CARISI (obverse, head of Augustus,)—the two of

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But soon the types were varied to commemorate an act of the individual in whose honor the coin was struck, or some one of his ancestors. Some, as the Mamilian family, borrowed from Greek fable. Livy says that Mamilius, their founder, was si famae credimus ab Ulixe deaque Circe oriundus, and Pompeius Festus states more explicitly Mamiliorum familia a Mamilia Telegoni filia. On the strength of this descent Ulysses is represented on their coin as he is described in the Odyssey returning home.

"Propt on a staff, a beggar old and bare,
In rags dishonest fluttering with the air."

"Argus, the dog, his ancient master knew,
He knew his lord: he knew and strove to meet;

* XVII, 337.

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