It would be of interest to trace these heraldic devices through the intervening ages, and along the devious ways by which they have come down to the present. This task would lead one far afield in history. In the hasty glance just now given to the coins of Greece, we have found material that will help to an understanding of what is impressed upon the coins of our own country. There would be no less of propriety and pertinence in asking what significance these symbols have brought to us from the time they were struck in faith and in awe by the very shrines of the gods in the temples of Greece. We may say that these symbols have no significance for us; but centuries hence, when the beginnings of our government are no longer a memory with the people, historians will relate with what instructive readiness the founders of our government, finding these colonies free and independent states, turned to the colonies and states of Greece for a model upon which to mould a nation; and they will find in early American coinage full confirmation of this view. The very same influence was manifested in the architecture of America for the first half of this century, as many a public edifice, and even private houses, sufficiently prove. Before examining any particular coin, it may be worth the while to notice a few of the more prominent features of our American types. The most striking of all is the absence of portrait heads. There is good reason for this. The theory of our government is, that it is but the collective will of the people. Again, since the invention of printing, there is longer reason in giving coins a medallic character. This function of coinage has been perpetuated in Germany. A _Sieges-Thaler_ was struck after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. There were a few portrait heads of Washington upon coins struck under his administration; but the practice ended there. It is said that the head upon some of our later coins is a portrait. If so, its American type is not recognizable. The head, whenever it appears upon the obverse of our coins, is Greek in outline and expression. This is so strongly the character of the features, that even where an attempt has been made to secure a distinctly American type, as in the case of the three-dollar gold coin of 1854, the cast of features is still Greek. Some slight modification is made by accessories, such as the circlet of feathers about the head. The obverse of the gold dollar of the same date bears what is described as the head of a beautiful Indian; but the features are Greek, and the hair is waving, unlike any ever seen among savages.