Excerpt from English Coins and Tokens It is well to remember, as evidenced by these gradual marks of degeneration, that the ruder coins are not, as might well be (and indeed have usually been) supposed, the oldest, but are, in fact, later than others of a higher and more artistic character. In other words, some of these series of coins, instead of showing the onward and gradual progress of art from a first rude attempt up to a highly finished work, serve to exhibit step by step its gradual degeneracy and decline down to ultimate extinction. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.