BRITISH AND MEDIEVAL ANTIQUITIES. 81 



church books, with elaborate tracery and figures in relief, 

 from a religious house dedicated to St. Stephen in Bamberg. 

 The most striking objects are three large silver sadvers with 

 ewers, one pair of fine design being of Flemish work of about 

 1580 ; the others, of which one bears the arms of Prince 

 Maurice of Nassau, are German, and a little later. One of 

 the remarkable features of the collection is a set of twelve 

 embossed tazzas with elaborate subjects after engravers of 

 the late sixteenth century. They appear to have been made 

 at Augsburg by a Frankfort silversmith, Peter Holbein. 

 xVnother series of a very picturesque character are the 

 standing cups in the forms of men or animals, such as deer, 

 bears, unicorn, &c., a fancy much in vogue in Germany in the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 



Among the wood carvings are several executed on a scale 

 of microscopic minuteness, portrait medallions as well as 

 miscellaneous busts and statuettes. Of the first class one 

 piece, elaborately carved with religious subjects, dated from 

 the fourteenth century, and may well be of English work. 

 The others are much Jater, one being dated 1511, and to 

 about that time the rest probably belong. One is in the 

 form of a miniature altar, a second represents a taber- 

 nacle enriched with the most intricate Gothic tracery, while 

 the others are chiefly beads which were worn pendent from 

 the girdle or from a rosary. The medallion portraits include 

 those of Francis I. of France ; Sybilla, Duchess of Cleves ; 

 Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands ; and John 

 of Leyden, the leader of the Anabaptists. As works of art, 

 the most remarkable are two busts in walnut wood, repre- 

 senting a man and woman in the prime of life, dating from 

 the fiirst quarter of the sixteenth century, and probably of 

 South German work. These fine portraits were said to repre- 

 sent Charles the Bold and his wife Margaret of York, but 

 the costume as well as the style of the work indicate a period 

 at least fifty years later than the death of Charles. Two 

 other pieces are worthy of particular mention, viz., a graceful 

 statuette of Omphale, and a group representing the contest 

 of Hercules and Antseus, one being as remxarkable for the 

 soft feminine grace as the other for its vigorous masculine 

 force ; both are of Flemish v7ork. 



Among the miscellaneous objects are many of considerable 

 interest and beauty, e.g., a fine silver spoon for incense, with 

 rock crystal handle, of the fi.f teenth century, from the Abbey 

 of St. Servatius at Maestricht, several spoons of hard stones, 

 mounted in gold, enamelled and jewelled ; wedding knives 

 with enamelled gold handles, one bearing the arms of Baldwin 

 de Bordes and Maria Commelin, married in 1608 ; five caskets 

 of various materials, a table clock of the sixteenth century, 

 a curious hunting calendar of the seventeenth century, and a 

 ■fine amber tankard elaborately carved in relief. 



