  We study the electron transport through a system of two low-capacitance metal
islands connected in series between two electrodes. The work is motivated in
part by experiments on semiconducting double-dots, which show intriguing
effects arising from coherent tunneling of electrons and mixing of the
single-electron states across tunneling barriers. In this article, we show how
coherent tunneling affects metallic systems and leads to a mixing of the
macroscopic charge states across the barriers. We apply a recently formulated
RG approach to examine the linear response of the system with high tunnel
conductances (up to 8e^2/h). In addition we calculate the (second order)
cotunneling contributions to the non-linear conductance. Our main results are
that the peaks in the linear and nonlinear conductance as a function of the
gate voltage are reduced and broadened in an asymmetric way, as well as shifted
in their positions. In the limit where the two islands are coupled weakly to
the electrodes, we compare to theoretical results obtained by Golden and
Halperin and Matveev et al. In the opposite case when the two islands are
coupled more strongly to the leads than to each other, the peaks are found to
shift, in qualitative agreement with the recent prediction of Andrei et al. for
a similar double-dot system which exhibits a phase transition.
