contained in the banner of Saint Edmund, he assigned two to France and England, but he could invent no other explanation for the third than the celestial crown the king was to receive hereafter: "These thre crownys historyaly t'aplye, By pronostyk notably sovereyne To sixte Herry in fygur signefye How he is born to worthy crownys tweyne In this lyff heer, afterward in hevene The thrydde crowne to receyve in certeyne So that, on the whole, we can trace no confirmation of the Three Crowns being recognised as the Arms of Ireland before the reign of King Edward the Fourth; and, though the device was perpetuated in the Irish coins of subsequent reigns, its original meaning appears to have been soon forgotten, and the Irish themselves, as Fynes Moryson relates, were generally impressed with the idea that it was a shadow of the triple crown of the Pope, and an emblem of his sovereign authority over their island. I cannot conclude, however, without expressing my regret that no verification has been discovered of the assertion made by Mr. George Chalmers (in his Caledonia, vol. i. p. 463), that a commission was issued in the reign of Edward the Fourth to inquire what were the Arms of Ireland, and that the return was that her arms were Three Crowns in Pale. If such a document were found to exist, it might carry the proof of such an interpretation of this device to a higher date than the year 1483 (if the Indenture at the Society of Antiquaries belongs to that year), or than the year 1478, to which Dr. Smith has assigned some of the coins bearing the Three Crowns. OBJECTIONS TO A LAUREL WREATH FOR THE BUST OF HER MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA ON THE COINAGE. LETTER TO W. WYON, ESQ. R.A.; ON THE RUMOUR OF THE LAUREL BEING PLACED ON THE COINAGE OF DOLLAR OF HENRY THE NEGRO KING OF HAYTI. The Dies engraved by Thomas Wyon, Senior, Esq., Chief Engraver of Her Majesty's Seals. Cork, 30 Dec. 1847. MY DEAR WYON,-THE newspapers tell us much of the coin (two-shilling piece) in which you are said to be engaged. The reverse is said to be pretty and new. And the obverse, being yours, must be good, so far as first-rate ability can make it. But if the same Lady Report speaks true, "that Her Majesty's bust is to be laureled," excuse me for saying that it will be (I think) "the unique barbarism of all known coinages, ancient and modern," if you do inflict a laurel wreath on a female head. Many will say that no one but an ignorant pedant, a Tipperary hedgerow pedagogue,* in * DEAR RICHARD,-Passing along the road in the neighbourhood of Mallow with a friend, we heard a murmur of tongues proceeding from a double ditch, which had been hollowed out to make room for a regular hedge school. On approaching the entrance we were invited by the master to enter and take our sates alongside of him. "Would you wish to hear one of my boys read his authors?" On declaring that it would give us much pleasure, he called out, "Tom Barry, come up here with your Virgil." Tom, a wild THE LAUREL WREATH ON THE BUST OF HER MAJESTY. 85 66 these days (and I believe Mr. Shiel is as totally devoid of all numismatic taste or knowledge as any of his bogtrotting constituents), would place it on the head of any living king, and therefore it cannot be your design. It was introduced on our coinage by James the First (a learned pedant by the way). You will remember that on the Greek and Roman coinages the fillet indicated a sovereign, the laurel a god, until the Roman senate voted it for the bust of Julius Cæsar (to cover his bald head, as they write). However, he was a great warrior, and had received from the senate the actual crown of laurel, so that it was a mere fact" on the coin. Can anything be more farcical than James the First assuming this badge, a wretch whose want of nerves obliged him to shut his eyes when a drawn sword was handed to him to knight a person (in several instances nearly poking out the eyes of those who were to be dubbed), and whose only valour was in cutting the throat of a deer, held down for him by dogs and foresters! It was too ludicrous an assumption even in those days of "the divine right of kings," and you will see in Ruding some of the ridicule it gave birth to. You very classically withdrew the silly disfigurement (for so it really is, artistically considered) from George the Fourth, and withheld it from William the Fourth; and in your recent crown of Her Majesty you have shewn how the actual may be identified with the beautiful. But to pass from that to laurels on a woman's head! I am lost in astonishment. Even in Queen Anne's days, when propriety of costume was very little thought of, and Julius Cæsar and Macbeth appeared in wigs and scarlet coats, gold lace and flowered gowns (see Pope), even then this was felt to be too bad to put her Majesty's head on the coins in bare-legged youth of fifteen, came up, rubbing his nose on his sleeve. "Recubans-reclining or lolling, or leaning; 'tis all the same thing. "Come, Tom, begin "Or the old elder tree at the corner of your father's pratee garden-you dog.' 66 This, you see, gintlemen, is my plan; I makes my boys give every possible English for the word, so that they will not soon forget it." We highly praised his plan as one not likely to be forgotten, and after obtaining a holiday for the boys, we retired in the midst of their shouts and huzzas. 15th Sept. Very truly thine, J. D. HUMPHREYS. laurel; and yet with Marlborough's victories much might have been said. But at the close of 1847, with the Elgin marbles in London (of England), with the recent arrival of the Nimroud marbles, where we see Sennecherib represented really as he dressed, to present the astonished world (at least of taste) with Queen Victoria in laurels, is something so outrageous to everything classical or propriety as to customs, manners, and common sense, that, my dear Wyon, until I see it, I will not, indeed I cannot, believe you would perpetrate such a blot on the English coinage and your own fair fame. Excuse extreme haste to save the post; and Believe me to remain, yours truly, RICHARD SAINTHILL. Evening. You are to take this as a postscript to my missive by the afternoon post, and allow me to inflict on you a few omitted mems. on the question of laurels for Queen Victoria. You need not be told that the Queen of Portugal on her coin wears a tiara only, as did Maria Louisa, as sovereign of Parma, &c. Isabella the Second has her hair tied together with a string of pearls. When Louis Philippe mounted the throne of "Three Days," his portrait was plain, as those of his predecessors, Charles the Tenth and Louis the Eighteenth; but the republican wiseacres then added an oak wreath to typify their citizen king. And the deep sagacious old file has in return wreathed Paris with a mural crown that will keep the citizens his subjects;* and the only laurel, on any coin in Europe, is on the bust of the Emperor of Austria (a sad sarcasm on the man). His great-grandmother, Maria Theresa, never assumed the laurel. Her early coins have her hair ornamented with pearls, then a tiara, and her later, a drapery at the back of her head. Yet she was all but a warrior, and quite a conqueror; and her Hungarian subjects shouted as they drew their swords," Moriamur pro Rege nostro, Maria Theresa." Every other sovereignin Europe at present, but Austria and the Citizen Kings Verified by King Louis Philippe and *"Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat." his sons, on the memorable 21 February, 1848. estimate of the Duchess of Angoulême, in 1815, Amelie, Queen of the French, was "the only man " in the Orleans family. of France and Belgium, are bare-headed on their coins-the actuality of what nature has made them; and this is as the ancient coins represent their sovereigns to us. Passing from Greece and Rome, the coins of the Parthian kings agree with the sculptures at Persepolis; and those of their successors, the Sassanian dynasty, are fac-similes of the sculptures at Nakshi Roustam and other places in Persia so carefully drawn by Sir Robert Kerr Porter. Even in the barbarous era of our Saxon kings, the engravers of their coins, as well as they could, gave their actual costume of crown, or cap, or helmet. In your recent crown of Her Majesty you have represented our sovereign lady wearing her crown and royally robed; in fact, such a bust as was actually seen at her coronation, and I suppose is at the opening and closing of Parliament. Allow me to ask what has been the feeling of the public at this transcript of royal nature? It is understood that eight thousand of these crowns were issued from the mint, and we have not heard that further issues will be discontinued. Nevertheless, in the face of this positive and possible issue, a collector of coins in Cork yesterday received a letter from a dealer in London, to inform him that he could not at present send him one of these crowns, and that when he could the price would be thirty shillings. Six hundred per cent. advance on its legal or current value! The only compliment to an engraver's ability that comes near this is mentioned by Pepys in his Diary, that thirty shillings was given for Oliver Cromwell's crowns engraved by Simon; but then few had been, and no more could be, struck. Molière, we are told, used to read his plays to his servant, to ascertain what common sense would decide as to their merits or absurdity. Now try a laurel wreath on Queen Victoria by this test. Let Her Majesty open Parliament wearing a wreath of laurel, and what would be thought of the transaction by the lords, commons, the fourth estate (the press), and all Europe? Would this be in accordance with that excellent taste and tact which renders Her Majesty's public appearances, and more particularly in Parliament, as popular and as regally admirable as we believe her private deportment to be amiable and most endearing? And if Her Majesty would not actually wear this laurel wreath, why should she be so represented on her coinage? Is that sense at the Mint which Her Majesty would consider folly in the House of Lords? It passes my poor comprehension to answer-why or how it can |