1883.] 071 the Forms and History of tlie Sword. 383 



sixteenth century the blade is made narrower and lighter, and the 

 sword-hand is for the first time adequately guarded. First, the plain 

 cross-bar puts on various curved forms intended to arrest or entangle 

 an enemy's blade with greater effect. Then rings project on either 

 side of the root of the blade, and are worked, as time goes on, into a 

 more or less complex system of convolutions according to tha 

 costliness of the weapon and the skill and fancy of the maker. These 

 curved guards are known as pas d'dne, while the cross-pieces in the 

 plane of the blade, now slender and elongated, and often curving 

 towards the point, are called quillons. Next the guard throws up one 

 or more branches, covering or encircling the exposed outer part of the 

 hand. These branches form a shell or basket pattern, their ends are 

 solidly joined to the pommel (after an interval of hesitating osculation, 

 well exemplified in a sword now in the museum of the United Service 

 Institution, which was borne by Cromwell at Drogheda). and nothing 

 but a process of selection and simplification is now needed to produce 

 all the modern patterns of sword-hilts. It was at Venice that the 

 basket-hilt came first into regular use in the swords named Schiavone, 

 from being worn by the Doge's body-guard [ScJiiavoni, Slavs, i. e. 

 Dalmatians). In these it is of a flattened elliptical shape. The 

 Scots, renowned before the middle of the sixteenth century for their 

 careful clioice of weapons, took up the model, and in the course of 

 another generation or two developed it into the well-known basket- 

 guard still used by our Highland regiments, the most complete pro- 

 tection for the swordsman's hand ever devised without undue loss of 

 freedom. Meanwhile the pas d'dne solidifies into a hollowed disc or 

 even a deep bell-shaped cup, the characteristic feature of the guard of 

 the Spanish rapier and the modern duelling sword. One cannot help 

 speaking of the works of men's hands, when one traces them in 

 historical order through their several forms, as if they were organic 

 and grew like flowers, or like variations of a natural species ; and in 

 truth it is not an idle conceit, for the development of design and 

 workmanship answers to a real organic development in the men from 

 whose brain and hand the work proceeds ; every generation takes up 

 from its fathers, if it is worthy of them, a new starting-point of 

 imagination and aptitude, and the strange conservatism of the 

 imitative faculty is a sure warrant of continuity. 



The latter half of the sixteenth century was the time when the 

 sword stood highest in artistic honour. Then it was that Holbein 

 designed its ornaments for Henry VIII., and that Albert Diirer 

 engraved a crucifixion on a plate of gold for the boss of a sword or 

 dagger of the Emperor Maximilian's. Both the sword and its orna- 

 ment disappeared at an early time, the prey of some greatly dai-ing 

 collector, and nothing is now known of their fate : the design 

 survives, for impressions were taken as from an ordinary engraver's 

 plate, and some are still in existence, though a good example is 

 extremely rare. But in the true armourer's or swordsman's eyes the 

 work even of a Holbein and a Diirer is only extraneous adornment, 

 . Vol. X. (No. 76.) 2 o 



