Perhaps I should not quarrel with such, for this state of affairs has, in times past, permitted my acquiring for pennies lovely medals and marvelously beautiful coins, while they were paying out, in the same sales, small fortunes for ugly broken-down coppers whose sole virtue (in my sight) lay in their containing half their face-value of pure copper! But we need not linger over these. Let us take thought of the _real_ masterpieces of the times that were and the times that are. We must include the remarkable productions of our contemporary medalists, inheritors of the skill and best traditions of past masters. In the first place, medallic art, more than any other, perhaps, nearly always displays prominent national characteristics; so it is comparatively easy to distinguish between the medals of various countries. The debt history owes to coins and medals, for the clues to the past they have given it, is enormous. Cities and sites have been identified by their means, dates of dynasties made certain by their evidence, and forgotten deeds of heroes recalled through their records. A few years ago a Sicilian peasant is said to have discovered the only specimen extant of a rare coin of antiquity that adds certainty to our knowledge of the site of Abacænum, whose ruins lie outside the walls of Tripi. As Vasari observed, the art of the medalist is “a work most difficult by artists as it holds the mean between painting and sculpture.” That it does, truly, as any collection of early medals and the best medals of to-day conclusively proves. At the end of the fifteenth century the making of dies as it was then practised permitted only designs for very low relief to be struck and of small circumference--such a size as we see in the coins of that time. Coins like the United States double eagle designed by Saint-Gaudens could not then have been attempted. Stamping from the die was a process yet in its infancy and was not then able to meet the requirements of striking the larger medal forms; hence these were invariably cast. First a model in wax was made and embedded in some fine molding-substance, such as earth or charcoal. Having fitted itself perfectly into every crevice of the wax model, this mold of earth was stiffened by a lye solution; the wax was melted out, and molten metal was poured from a crucible into the mold which was left behind. Whether or not replicas were made from the same mold is a question that remains unsolved. Probably not, but instead they may have been made from the new molds of new wax models formed in plaster molds from plaster casts of the originals. When removed from its mold the medal was worked over with a fine gritty substance, and often with finishing instruments. Moreover, the edges had to be filed smooth, as the casting always left them rough. In many cases it is apparent that engraving was resorted to in order that outlines might be emphasized, especially in indicating hair.