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ON ANCIENT CASKETS OF IVORY AND WOOD. 



Whatever object of antiquity tends to exhibit the manners 

 and customs of former times, atfords an illustration highly useful 

 and interesting. It is in such way that the study becomes of 

 the utmost service to history, and enables us the better to 

 appreciate the blessings of our present highly cultivated and 

 enlightened state of society. We shall find, on investigation, 

 that this remark applies in an eminent degree to those caskets 

 of wood and ivory, of which, owing to the handsome bequest 

 of the late Francis Douce, Esq., F. S. A., the largest collection 

 in this country is at Goodrich Court, in the county of Here- 

 ford. ""J his is the case not merely on account of the purposes 

 to which they were applied, but more especially from the 

 instructive details of their sculptured ornaments. 



During the Xlllth, XlVth, and XVth centuries these 

 caskets appear generally to have belonged to a lady's toilette, 

 and strongly resemble, what was no doubt their prototype, the 

 pyxis of the ancient Greeks, which is so frequently seen in 

 the hands of ladies represented on the fictile vases ; and this 

 opinion is strengthened by the fact of the fashion having been 

 derived from the Greeks of Constantinople, and perhaps 

 introduced by those who returned from the crusade of St. 

 Louis, and Prince Edward. M. Millin, in his " Voyage dans 

 les Departemens," tom. 1, p. 241, describing the museum at 

 Dijon, mentions " Boites d' ivorie venant de la toilette d' una 

 ancienne duchesse ;" and, what is still better authority, 

 Higden, in his Cronicle, fol. cclxxxix, speaking of Fair Rosa- 

 mond, gives a picture of his own age, by saying " this wenche 

 had a lytyll coffer scarcely of two fote long, made by a wonder 

 crafte, that is yet seen there, (Woodstock.) Therein it 

 semith that geantes fighte, beestes startle, foule flee, and 

 fysshe lepe, without any mans mevynge." The passage is to 

 the same effect in the Latin edition. By this we are not 

 to conceive that this effect was produced by any mechanical 

 means, as by some kind of clockwork, but that it was sculp- 

 tured in such an admirable manner that the subjects on it 

 looked as if they had motion. The generality of the caskets in 

 the Doucean Museum here, do not exceed one foot in length, 

 but there is a Greek ivory one, of the IXth century covered 

 with half-length effigies of saints, which answers in size to 

 that which Higden describes. It has a sliding top, and was 



NO, IV. i H 



