THE MODERN HUMANITIES RESEARCH ASSOCIATION
The January number of the Bulletin of the Modern Humanities Research Association contains a summary of the Presidential Address delivered in October, 1919, by M. Gustave Lanson, the famous French scholar and critic. The Association, which, though founded only in June, 1918, numbers nearly 500 members, is now penetrating to some of the remoter quarters of the globe; among the last candidates to be elected were some from Czecho-Slovakia, the Malay States, New Zealand, and Western Canada, and most of these were at once put into touch with members at home belonging to subject groups representing their particular interests. The Hon. Secretary (Mr. E. Allison Peers, 24 Beaufort Road, Kingston-on-Thames) writes in the Bulletin of proposals submitted to the Association that it should produce a comprehensive Bibliographical Annual, a task which a body with so wide a membership seems peculiarly fitted to attempt.
The Modern Humanities Research Association is fulfilling another obligation which rests upon all who speak the English language in its efforts to bridge the Atlantic and unite those on both sides who are engaged in higher studies in Modern Languages and Literatures. Its membership is growing in the United States so rapidly that an American Secretary (Professor M. Blakemore Evans, of the Ohio State University) has been appointed. At its most recent London meeting, on January 6th, too, Professor Carleton Brown, of Minnesota, was among the speakers on "Conditions of Postgraduate Study." Such interchange of help and information as the Association brings about between England and America can have none but good effects.
Among the Vice-Presidents of the Association, prominent names are those of Sir Sidney Lee (its first President), Dr. Walter Leaf, Sir A. W. Ward, M. Jusserand, Signor Farinelli, Professor Jespersen, Professor Oliver Emerson, and Sr. Menéndez Pidal.
THE ROYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETY
At the January meeting of the Royal Numismatic Society the Rev. E. A. Sydenham read a paper on the "Coinages of Augustus." He began by giving a chronological summary of the various series and groups of coins under Augustus. There were seven species of mints: (a) the Senatorial Mint of Rome; (b) Military Mints; (c) Mints in Senatorial Provinces; (d) Mints in Imperial Provinces; (e) Autonomous Mints (issuing bronze only); (f) the "Imperatorial Mint"; (g) the Imperial Mint. After brief notes on the Senatorial Mint (43-36 B.C.), the military coinage of Octavius in Gaul and Italy (41-39 B.C.), incidentally attributing the S.C. coins to camp mints of Northern Italy, Mr. Sydenham proceeded to discuss the Asiatic coinages (28-15 B.C.) and the Imperatorial Mint (21-15 B.C.). Besides coins generally attributed to Asiatic mints the reader proposed to give the undated silver and gold with CAESAR DIVI F to Asia rather than Rome, and criticised Laffranchi's attribution of certain coins to Phrygia and Gabrici's to Athens. The CA bronze coins he attributed to Asia reading the CA as Commune Asiæ. The coins attributed to the "Imperatorial" Mint are very distinctive in style and were probably issued under direct control of Augustus. These coins had been attributed by Grueber to Rome and by Laffranchi to Spain. Mr. Sydenham gave cogent arguments against these views and added reasons for considering them a distinct Imperatorial issue. A theory on which a good deal of the argument turns is that in 28 B.C. Augustus made a formal surrender of his triumviral office and the extraordinary powers pertaining to it. Included in the powers was probably the right of coinage. The surrender of this right was merely an act of policy which Augustus did not regard as permanently binding. But he held to it to this extent that for five or six years he issued no coins of any sort on his own authority, and even down to the end of his reign he issued no coins in Rome. After an experimental coinage through P. Carisius in Spain (24-22 B.C.) he inaugurated his "Imperatorial" Mint, but confined its operations to the provinces. Finally he fixed the Imperial Mint at Lugdunum (14 B.C.).
THE SOCIETY OF GENEALOGISTS OF LONDON
The Society of Genealogists of London is collecting lists of books, articles, deeds, MSS., and documents generally in reference to specific families and places. It has many such lists and references to documents, as well as collections of documents themselves, and wishes to add to them to facilitate research. Readers kindly supplying such lists, long or short, are assured that they are filed at once by the Society in such a manner that they are immediately available for reference. An excellent example of the form such lists might take is provided in Mr. Walter Rye's Norfolk Topography. Communications should be addressed to 5 Bloomsbury Square, W.C.1.