Part 3

‘Well, he came into the station quite quiet, and seemed a bit cast down, but that was all. Said fate was against him, and had saved the man he thought to hang in his stead, and he knew how it must end, and couldn’t wait any longer. I cautioned him, of course—told him to sleep on it before he said anything; but make a statement he would. The short of it all is, that the idea of murdering the old lady for her money had come into his mind in a flash when he saw that poor drunken fool exhibiting his knife in the tavern. He followed him, and picked his pocket of the knife, and then hung about the house, meaning to get in after dark. Then he saw the girl come out and go off, leaving the door closed but not latched, the careless hussy! Then in slips the gentleman, and does what he’d made up his mind to—for you see the old woman knew him well, so he couldn’t afford to leave her alive—gets the cash, and slips out. All in gold it was, two hundred and fifty pounds. When he heard that Harden couldn’t be found, he got uneasy in his mind, and has been getting worse ever since, though he did well enough in trade with the money. Seems he considered he wasn’t safe until some one had been hanged. So, when he recognised Harden, he was naturally down on him at once, and was intensely eager to get him convicted—which I noticed myself, sir, as of course you did, and thought it queer too, I don’t doubt. He took too much pains, you see—he must employ you to make certain, instead of leaving it to us; whereas if he hadn’t come to you, your evidence would never have been given, and I think you’ll say nothing could have saved the prisoner.’

It was true enough. The wretched man had insured the failure of his own fiendish design by employing me, of all the solicitors to whom he might have gone!

I learned next morning, how Harden, after trying in vain to light his pipe on that memorable evening, had wandered for hours through the hard-hearted streets, until at daybreak he had found himself in the docks, looking at a large ship preparing to drop down the river with the tide. How he had managed to slip aboard unseen and stow himself away in the hold, with some idea of bettering his not over-bright fortunes in foreign parts. How he had supported his life in the hold with stray fragments of biscuit, which he happened to have in his pockets, until, after a day or two of weary beating about against baffling winds, when they were out in mid-channel, the usual search for stowaways had unearthed him. How the captain, after giving him plenty of strong language and rope’s-end, had at length agreed to allow him to work as a sailor on board the vessel. How on landing at Sydney he had gone into the interior, taken service with his present master—under another name than his own, wishing to disconnect himself entirely with his former life—and by honestly doing his duty had attained his present position.

By the light of this narrative, that which had puzzled me became perfectly clear—namely, how it was that he had contrived not only to get so entirely lost in spite of the hue and cry after him, but also to remain in ignorance of his aunt’s fate.

My client was tried, convicted, and executed in due course; his plea of guilty and voluntary surrender having no weight against the cruel and cowardly attempt to put an innocent man in his place.

When I last saw John Harden, he was married to a serious lady, who had been his late master’s housekeeper, and was possessor of a prosperous general shop in a country village, stocked by means of the money which Mr Slocum had generously left him.

COIN TREASURES.

Man is a collecting animal. It would be absurd to ask what he collects; more to the point would it be to ask what he does _not_ collect. Books, pictures, marbles, china, precious stones, hats, gloves, pipes, walking-sticks, prints, book-plates, monograms, postage-stamps, hangmen’s ropes; the list might be increased indefinitely.

What is it that impels us to heap up such treasures? We say ‘us,’ because we are convinced that few escape untouched by the disease. It may be dormant; it may possibly never show itself; but it is there, and only wants a favourable conjunction of circumstances to bring it to life.

Of all the forms of the collecting mania, few have been so long in existence as that of coins, and few seize us so soon. The articles are portable, nice to look at, and of some intrinsic value. Every one knows what a coin is, and when a lad happens to get hold of one struck, say, two hundred years ago, he naturally is impressed by the fact. Every one knows how easily the very young and the ignorant are taken by the mere age of an article. The writer dates his acquaintance with numismatics (the history of coins) from his receiving in some change a half-crown of Charles II. when he was eleven years old. It was worn very much, but it was two hundred years old, and that was enough. After that, a good deal of pocket-money went in exchange for sundry copper, brass, and silver coins, with the usual result. The collection was discovered to be rubbish; but experience had been gained, and that, as is well known, must be bought.

The numismatist can head his list of devotees by the illustrious name of Petrarch, who made a collection of Roman coins to illustrate the history of the Empire. He was followed by Alfonso of Aragon; Pope Eugenius IV.; Cosmo de’ Medici; Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary; the Emperor Maximilian I. The man dear to all book-lovers, Grolier, had his cabinet of medals; Politian was the first to study them with reference to their historical value. Gorlaeus succeeded him. Early in the sixteenth century, Goltzius the engraver travelled over Europe in search of coins, and reported the existence of about one thousand cabinets. Our own collections appear to have begun with Camden; he was followed by Sir Robert Cotton, Laud, the Earl of Arundel, both the Charleses, the Duke of Buckingham, and Dr Mead in the early part of last century. Later on, we come to the celebrated William Hunter—not to be confounded with his still greater brother, John—who left to the university of Glasgow his magnificent collection of Greek coins. Archbishop Wake, Dr Barton, Dr Brown, and Dr Rawlinson formed cabinets of considerable extent and value, all of which found a resting-place in the colleges of Oxford. All these, however, were surpassed by Richard Payne-Knight, who was born in the middle of the last century, and formed the finest collection of Greek coins and bronzes that had ever been brought together. It was valued at fifty thousand pounds, and he left it to the nation. The catalogue drawn up by himself was published in 1830 by the Trustees of the British Museum.

At the date of this magnificent legacy, our national collection of coins was of no importance; but since then, by purchase and bequest, it has so greatly increased its stores, that it undoubtedly stands on an equality with the French national collection, long above rivalry. Donations during the lifetime of the owner, too, are not unknown. In 1861, Mr De Salis made the nation a present of his extensive cabinet of Roman coins. In 1864, Mr E. Wigan called one morning on Mr Vaux, the keeper of the coins and medals, and producing a case, told him that was his cabinet of Roman gold medals. Would he be good enough to examine it carefully, and choose for the Museum what he thought best? Needless to say, no scruples were made by the head of the department; consultations were held with the staff, with the result that two hundred and ninety-one were chosen, representing a value, at a modest computation, of nearly four thousand pounds. In 1866, Mr James Woodhouse of Corfu left to the nation five thousand six hundred and seventy-four specimens of Greek coins, mostly in the finest preservation; of these, one hundred and one were gold, two thousand three hundred and eighty-seven silver, three thousand one hundred and twenty-eight copper, and fifty-eight lead. That year was particularly fruitful in acquisitions, for no fewer than eleven thousand five hundred and thirty-two coins were placed in the national cabinets.

But it is impossible that mere donations could be depended on. In every sale, the British Museum is a formidable competitor, and if, as not unfrequently happens, it is outbidden by a private collector, it has the advantage of an institution over a person, in that it lives longer, and often has the opportunity of acquiring what it wants at the dispersal of the cabinet of its rival. One of the most important purchases ever made was that of the collection of the Duc de Blacas in 1867, for which government got a vote of forty-five thousand seven hundred and twenty-one pounds. Amongst its treasures were some two thousand Greek and Roman coins, chiefly gold.

All good and rare specimens gravitate naturally to the chief museums of Europe, which would thus stand in the way of a private individual forming a cabinet, were it not for the fact, that finds are continually taking place, either unexpectedly or in consequence of excavations in ancient countries. Only the other day, we noticed the sale of a large lot of medieval coins at Paris, which had been discovered when pulling down some ancient buildings. During the German excavations at Olympia, extending over six years, some six thousand pieces of all ages from 500 B.C. to 600 A.D. were brought to light. These, however, became the property of the Greek government, and are not likely to come into the market. Some of the finds are most extraordinary. In 1818 were fished up out of the river Tigris two large silver coins of Geta, king of the Edoni; a Thracian people of whom we know only the name, and whose king’s name is all that we have to tell us of his existence. These are now in the British Museum, and are especially interesting as being the earliest pieces we have stamped with a monarch’s name. Their date is placed prior to 480 B.C. We have seen a coin of Philip Aridæus, successor of Alexander the Great, struck at Mitylene, which was found in the roots of a tree which was being grubbed up in a park in Suffolk. The incident was inquired into at the time, and no doubt seems to have arisen as to the fact of its having been found as alleged. Nearly twenty years ago, General Philips discovered at Peshawur twenty milled sixpences of Elizabeth. There was a tradition in the place that an Englishman had been murdered there a very long time before, and the tomb was shown. It is naturally inferred, therefore, that the coins had belonged to him, or how else explain the find? When the railway was being made from Smyrna to Aidin, a few dozen very ancient coins were turned up, which were all sold at once at a few shillings each; but the dealers hearing of this, soon appeared on the spot, and the original buyers had the satisfaction of reselling the coins at four or five pounds apiece.

Smyrna is, as the most important city of Asia Minor, naturally the headquarters of the dealers in Greek antiquities. Mr Whittall, a well-known merchant there, had formed a very fine collection of coins which was dispersed in London in 1867, and fetched two thousand seven hundred and twenty-nine pounds. When excavating at the base of the colossal statue of Athena, in her temple at Priene, Mr Clarke found five tetradrachms of Orophernes, supposed to be the one who was made king of Cappadocia by Demetrius in 158 B.C. These were absolutely unique. In Cyprus, some years ago, the British consul at Larnaca obtained a large hoard, which had been discovered during some building operations. This was a particularly rich find, as amongst them happened to be no fewer than thirty-four undescribed pieces of Philip, Alexander the Great, and Philip Aridæus. Mr Wood, when excavating on the site of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, came upon a lot of more than two thousand coins of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In 1876, some workmen, when digging, came upon a vase containing, amongst other relics of antiquity, some fifty electrum staters of Cyzicus and Lampsacus, all of the end of the fifth century B.C. Only a few years ago, in that most out-of-the-way part of Central Asia, more than a hundred miles beyond the Oxus, was discovered a hoard of coins chiefly of the Seleucidæ, dating from the third century B.C.—showing how far, even in those early days, trade had been carried. A few of them, too, were unknown pieces of Alexander the Great. Without being prepared to go into exact particulars, we should imagine that a find in 1877 of twenty-nine thousand eight hundred and two Roman coins in two vases in Blackmoor Park, Hampshire, was one of the most extensive ever known.

That coins are interesting, as giving us portraits of those who have made some show in the world, is undoubted. It is equally true that by their means we are made acquainted with the existence of kings and kingdoms of whom history has left no records. The fact of a Greek kingdom of Bactria occupying that even yet comparatively unexplored region, half-way between the Caspian and the Himalaya, was revealed to the world only some fifty years ago by the finding of coins bearing portraits and legends of the Greek-speaking rulers. An extremely large silver piece in the British Museum, supposed to belong to a period anterior to 480 B.C. and struck by the Odomanti of Thrace, a tribe of whom we know nothing, was found at Ishtib. In the same collection is a large silver coin of the Orrescii, an unknown Macedonian people, which was found in Egypt, along with a very early drachma of Terone, and a large decadrachm of Derronikos, a king unknown to history. These are supposed to have been carried to Egypt by some of the soldiers of Xerxes, during their retreat from Greece after the battle of Platæa.

The greatest sale of coins by public auction, we should imagine, was that of Lord Northwick, in December 1859, and April 1860. The former consisted of Greek coins only, and produced eight thousand five hundred and sixty-eight pounds; the latter, of Roman and later pieces, fetched three thousand three hundred and twenty pounds. The Greek coins were especially fine and rare, and some of them unique. One, a large piece of Camarina, bearing as reverse a nymph carried by a swan, a specimen of highest Greek art, went for fifty-two pounds to the British Museum. A splendid piece of Agrigentum, with reverse of the monster Scylla, fetched one hundred and fifty-nine pounds. A coin of Cleopatra, queen of Syria, daughter of Ptolemy VI. of Egypt, and wife successively of Alexander I., Demetrius II., and Antiochus VII., and mother of Seleucus V., and the sixth and seventh Antiochi—all kings of Syria—was bought by the British Museum for two hundred and forty pounds. It is said to be the only one known. Altogether our national collection obtained one hundred specimens at a cost of nine hundred pounds. Lord Northwick had lived to a great age; but up to the last he preserved his faculties, and indulged his passion for ancient art by buying and exchanging objects. His pictures, statuary, everything, in fact, came to the hammer after his death. The years between 1790 and 1800 were spent by him in Italy, and he gained his early initiation into antiquities under the eye of Sir William Hamilton, the well-known ambassador at Naples. His first purchase is said to have been an after-dinner frolic in the shape of eight pounds for a bag of Roman brass coins. He and Payne-Knight bought and divided the fine collections of Prince Torremuzza and Sir Robert Ainslie—for the latter of which they gave eight thousand pounds. Since his lordship’s sale, there has been nothing to approach it. Fine though small cabinets have not been wanting, however, and the enthusiast can always find something with which to feed his passion. At Huxtable’s sale, in 1859, the collection fetched an unusually large sum. Hobler’s Roman cabinet of brass coins was sold for one thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine pounds; Merlin’s, containing one hundred and forty-one lots of Greek and Roman, produced eight hundred and seventy-eight pounds; Sheppard’s Greek, nineteen hundred pounds; Huber’s, containing some hundreds of unpublished Greek, three thousand; Ivanoff’s, three thousand and eight pounds; Bowen, one thousand five hundred and fifty-three pounds; Brown, three thousand and twelve pounds; Sambon, three thousand one hundred and forty-eight pounds; Exereunetes, containing several supposed to be unique, one thousand four hundred and twenty-one. The Sambon sale is memorable for the fact that a brass medallion of Geta, of the intrinsic value of twopence, was knocked down at five hundred and five pounds!

Every one who has read the _Antiquary_, whether bibliomaniac or not, can enjoy the glowing description by Monkbarns: ‘Snuffy Davie bought the _Game of Chess_, 1474, the first book ever printed in England, from a stall in Holland, for about two groschen, or twopence of our money. He sold it to Osborne for twenty pounds and as many books as came to twenty pounds more. Osborne resold this inimitable windfall to Dr Askew for sixty guineas. At Dr Askew’s sale, this inestimable treasure blazed forth in its full value, and was purchased by royalty itself for one hundred and seventy pounds.—Could a copy now occur,’ he ejaculated with a deep sigh and lifted-up hands—‘what would be its ransom!’

The progress of intelligence has affected coins in these days no less than books. It is only in the very out-of-the-way places that coins are to be picked up for a song. The chief hunting-ground, Asia Minor, is well looked after by the dealers, and the private collector has, of course, to pay them their profit. The increase in value may be gauged by the following instance: A gold coin of Mithridates, the size of our half-sovereign, fetched twenty-five guineas in 1777. In 1817 it came to the hammer, and was knocked down at eighty pounds to a well-known collector. Unfortunately for him, a duplicate soon afterwards appeared in a sale, and he had to pay ninety pounds for that. Later on still, a third turned up, and that fell to his bid at a hundred pounds. Yet a fourth came to light in 1840. The owner of the three bid up to a hundred and ten pounds, but had to give in to a bid of a hundred and thirteen pounds from a rival. Fancy his feelings! The rare brass medallions of Commodus, intrinsic value twopence or threepence, fetch up to thirty pounds, and the large pieces of Syracuse, the finest coins perhaps that we know of, regularly run up to fifty and sixty pounds. It is evident, therefore, that it is not every one who can indulge the passion for coin-collecting. At a little expense, however, electrotypes which are absolute facsimiles can be obtained from the British Museum, and this fact, which is not generally known, should result in the spread of a knowledge of Greek art; for it must not be forgotten that in the early coinage of the Greek race the progress of art can be traced as completely as in any now existing remains.

MY FELLOW-PASSENGER.

IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.

To say that the real zest of an Englishman’s delight in England and English home-life is only attained after residence or travel in other countries, is to quote something like a truism. To this influence at least was owing in great measure the feeling of quite indescribable pleasure with which, after a not altogether successful six months of big-game hunting in the interior of Africa—a very far-away country indeed in those days, when no cable communication existed with England—I found myself on board the good ship _Balbriggan Castle_ (Captain Trossach), as she steamed slowly out of the Cape Town Docks on a lovely June evening in 187-, homeward bound. I had come from one of the eastern ports of the colony in sole occupation of a cabin; and though I knew we had taken on board a large number of passengers that afternoon, I was not a little put out to find, on going below, that the berth above mine had been filled, and that the inestimable blessing of solitude was to be denied me for the next twenty days or so. However, there was no help for it; and with the best grace I could command, I answered my fellow-traveller’s courteous expressions of regret with a hope that the voyage would be a pleasant one. The new-comer was a tall, slightly-built, and strikingly handsome man, of about thirty, remarkable for a slow deliberative manner of speech, with which an occasional nervous movement of the features seemed oddly at variance. On a travelling-bag, as to the exact disposition of which he was especially solicitous, I caught sight of the letters P. R. in big white capitals. These being my own initials, the coincidence, though commonplace enough, furnished a topic of small-talk which sufficed to fill up the short time intervening before dinner, and ended, naturally enough, in the discovery of my new friend’s name—Paul Raynor—given, as I afterwards remembered, with some little hesitation, but producing a much finer effect of sound than my own unmelodious Peter Rodd.

At dinner, I found my place laid opposite to Raynor; and thus, notwithstanding the claims of an excellent appetite and the desire to take stock of other passengers, I had again occasion to observe the painful twitching of the fine features, recurring with increased frequency as he, too, looked round at those about him, and seemed to scan each in turn with more than ordinary deliberation. The man interested me greatly; and as I listened to his conversation with some Englishmen near, and noted the dry humour with which he hit off the peculiarities of the worthy colonists we were leaving behind, I saw at once that here at least was promise of relief to the monotony of the voyage, of which I should be constantly able to avail myself.

A sea like glass, and a temperature of unusual mildness for a June evening in those latitudes, drew every one on deck, and ensconcing myself in a pleasant corner just behind the too often violated legend, ‘No smoking abaft the companion,’ I proceeded to illuminate a mild Havana cigar, when I was joined by Raynor, with whom, after a good-humoured joke anent my unsuccessful attempt to obtain that solitude which the cabin could no longer afford, I renewed our conversation of the afternoon, passing from generalities to more personal matters, and sowing in a few hours the seeds of a friendship destined to grow and ripen with that marvellous rapidity only to be attained by the forcing process of life on board a passenger-ship.

Nothing could exceed the frankness of Raynor’s own story, as he told it me in brief before we turned in that night. One of a large family of sons, he had conceived an unconquerable dislike to the profession of teaching, to which, in lieu of one of a more lucrative nature, he had found himself compelled to turn. The suggestion of a friend, that he should try his luck in the colonies, was hardly made before it was acted upon; and a few weeks found him in an up-country town at the Cape, where his letters of introduction speedily brought him employment in a well-known and respected house of business. Here he rose rapidly; and having, by care and occasional discreet speculation, saved a few hundreds, was now on his way home, with four months’ leave of absence, professedly as a holiday trip, but really, as he admitted to me, to see what chances presented themselves of investing his small capital and procuring permanent employment in England. In answer to my question, whether his absence after so short a time of service might not conceivably affect his prospects in the firm, he replied, that his intention of remaining at home had not been communicated to any one; and that, should no suitable opening offer in England, he would, upon returning to the colony, resume his former position with Messrs ——, whose word to that effect had been given.