Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1870-11-23
twenty Centuries JingIIng Down
TO Us.


conception of values and equivalents,
there appears from history to have been
corners Of money and lovers of the precious
metals. The aliaring glitter of gold and
SILVER, as now, had its effect in the long,
gone centuries in discovery, in invention,
In adventure, as well as in trade and COM
merce. The precious metals led ancient
armies to conquest and stimulates modern
discovery and enterprise. Earlier than
Inc golden fleece of Oolchis, of which
nnd old Homers sung in his nliad, were the
energies of men bent to the determined
work Of gathering gold. Croesus and CleoD,
Marcellus and Xerxes, Greek and Roman,
Scythian and Gaul, we're alike its vota-
mes. Along with human progress and
advancement and discovery has come this
love for the lucre of life. II helped to
Irvine the hurels Of vanquished ASIA about
the brow of Macedon's 'conquering boy, :"
and called out the rude barbaric Gauls and
Cloths from their northern hive" to clip
the wings of Rome's imperial eagle. It
led Pizarro and his robber bands against
the Peruvian nountaineer, and TO the con-
quest Of the Children of the Sum-" It
brought the prov Of Cristoval Colon to
the shores of Salvador, and opened up to
art and to civilization this western world.
With all Of its wondrous fascination and
endless power, and varied forms and
appliances, we did not know there was
such private collection of coins, old,
past and present. in any one assortment,
In the entire country, as has been for some
time on exhibition in this city. We refer
to the large and varied collection of coins
OF Gen. g. p. Thurston of our city, which he
hAs been gathering together since his early
boyhood. We bad no idea there was such
q collection in the hands of any one person
IN the country, and we venture the asser-
ton with the certainty Of no successful re-
futation, that there is no other such collec-
ton in private hands in the Southwest. if
in the nation. The collection, which has
been for some time at the Peoples Bank,
embraces near 3, 900 specimens, including
the coinage, perhaps of every nation on the
globe. Some of them, too, are from ma
tons that live only in song, in the arts
and In the past, whose untading elories are
gathered from the far back lumber yards of
history. Among them there are coins of
the Roman Empire, before the decline and
fall, of the reign Of nearly every Emperor In
looking at them, the old years of Tiberius,
of Aggrippina, of Nero, and the cunning
cruelty of Sejanus, are brought to the
view. There are coins issued after the
removal Of the capital, from the seven
hilled city Of the Yellow Tiber
to Byzsntium, or Constantinople, which,
from their inferior coinage, shows decline
Of ART as well as of power
There are some twenty coins more than
fifteen hundred years old, and several more
than two thousand years old, these being
Greek, Roman and Chinese. From the
face of these coins twenty centuries look
upon us. They are older than Theodore,
and might tell tales, could they speak, of
AchsiRn Leagues; they are older than
Herod, and might have been a part of
those used in the market places when Tao
titus wrote his annals. The very old coins
contain the faces of the old Roman Empe-
rors very well preserved. From them Au-
gustus and Domitian and Trsjan look upon
MS through the centuries of the past. The
specimen OF the silver coinage of Hadrian,
who reigned just after the beginning of
the Christian era, is very perfect. There
are coins of Augustus Cesar, who reigned
from 63 years before Christ till the year IA
after Christ, and which are the tribute
money of the Caesars referred to in the
Scriptures. These are as old as the coins
that came jingling from the tables of the
money changers In the Temple, when they
were told by the Saviour Of man that they
could not make His Fathers house house
Of merchandise. In the collection are the
ooHls of William the Conqueror, the first
Norman King, who gained the battle of
Hastings and conquered England in the
year 1066. They contain the face of the
King, and an inscription that can be dis
tinctly read, and are as well preserved as
more modern coinage, as are also the coins
Of Edward and Henry the Second, Eliza
beth and Charles the First who was be-
headed, and others The German coinage
embraces rnanybesutiful specimens, coined
soon after the Reformation in Germany,
and contains the coins of many Dukes and
Princes who espoused the cause of Luther
ana Melancthon. What tales they tell
They recall the burning of John Huss at
Constance, TINT kindled war all over b.
hernia. They tell of the pale-facei monk,
the bold Saxon miners son, who dared
burn the Pope's Bull, and who lit in Eu-
rope the lamp Of Protestant Christianity.
Among the early American coins there
are some rare pieces. 1t is not generally
known that the colonies had coinage be-
there are coins gilmore than hAlfthe thirteen
original colonies. There are Washington
pennies, Franklin pennies, pine tree shil-
lings, Virginia pennies, and many speci-
mems of rare Revolutionary coinage.
There is, also, a collection of Continental
and Confederate paper currency, and the
only piece of Confederate silver we have
seen, with q cotton plant on one side and
n I'll. -. H. IL.
motto "a United South" This coin was
not of regular Confederate coinage, bat
was issued during the early part of the
war by private parties in Tennessee, and
is quite handsome. There ere, also, many
valuable English coins, some of them
over a thousand years old, and are valus-
BILE historical relics--many of them in ar
excellent state of preservation.
There is also collection of the political
pennies and tokens issued by the Whig
during the administration of Andrew Jack
son, which illustrate the political issues O
the day, and are, some of them very ridi-
culous and quaint, representing ''OlC
Hickory" holding on to the money bags
and charging on the National Bank, sstrid;
of 9 jackass, with drawn sword, etc
The Chinese coins of two thousand year
ago, do not differ in any respect from theil
coinage of the present day, showing thu
wonderful sameness and opposition to the
progress of that people.
This rare collection of coins by Gen.
Thruston has been an incidental labor o
his life, as well as one of love, and is Ger
tainly one Of the most valuable, extensive
and attractive of a purely private character
in the United States.
THE DENT FAMILY.
Ca dispatch from our Washington
correspondent says the Dent referred t
in his letter was not Judge Dent but {
brother of his "-GGSette.
There Won are wrong again. The Den