and
cloister may fade from memory, its higher aspect also, that of city
proper, how can we retain this fourfold [Page: 98] analysis, and how
test if it be true? Take then one final illustration; this time no mere
logical skeleton, however simple or graphic, but an image more easily
retained, because a concrete and artistic one, and moreover in terms of
that form of life-labour and thought-notation--that of current
coin--which, in our day especially, dominates this vastest of cities;
and hence inherits for the region of its home and centre--"the Bank"
which has so thoroughly taken precedence of the town-house and
cathedral, of the fortress and palace--the honoured name of "City." The
coinages of each time and place combine concrete and social use with
statements of historic facts; and they add to both of these a wealth of
emblematic suggestions: but that is to say, they express not only their
town, and something of its _school_, but much of its thought also, its
_cloister_ in my present terminology.

So before me lies an old "bawbee" of my own home city. On one side
stands the hammerman at his anvil, below him the motto of his guild,
"_Non marte sed arte_." Here then the industrial "Town" and its "School"
express themselves plainly enough, and precisely as they have been above
defined. But on the other side spreads the imperial double eagle; since
Perth _(Bertha aurea)_ had been the northmost of all Rome's provincial
capitals, her re-named "Victoria" accordingly, as the mediaeval herald
must proudly have remembered, so strengthened his associations with the
Holy Roman Empire with something of that vague and shadowy historic
dignity which the Scot was wont to value so much, and vaunt so high. On
the eagle's breast is a shield, tressured like the royal standard,
since Perth was the national capital until the "King's Tragedy" of
1457; but instead of the ruddy lion the shield bears the lamb with the
banner of St. John, the city's saint. This side, too, has its motto, and
one befitting an old capital of King and Commons, both in continual
strife with the feudal nobles, "_Pro Rege, Lege, et Grege_." Here then,
plain upon this apparent arbitrarily levised trifle, this petty
provincial money-token, this poor bawbee, that is, this coin not only of
the very humblest order, but proverbially sordid at that, we find
clearly set down, long generations ago, the whole [Page:99] four-fold
analysis and synthesis of civic life we have been