THE DANXE OF DEATH.

cuts were by John Bewick, the brother of "the celebrated"Thomas Bewick. These, distinctly better than much of theacknowledged work of the elder brother, were engraved about1787, and published in 1789, under the title of " Emblems ofMortality," and according to Mr. Austin Dobson, were copied fromthe Latin " Imagines Mortis," of 1547. They were published byT. Hodgson, Clerkenwell, in 1789, and apparently simultaneouslyby William Charnley, Newcastle. In the latter work the cuts areannounced as being engraved by Thomas and John Bewick, butin their correspondence on the subject, Thomas decidedly doesnot lead us to infer that he ever touched them. Mr. Wrightdeclares, in connection with these cuts, that "expense is an objectwhich is never regarded in supporting the character of the Port-folio." If the expense was serious to him, we have here anillustration of the manner in which artists' work is too commonlyrewarded—John Bewick received six shillings each for these beauti-ful cuts; his brother wrote to tell him they were worth double,and probably in the year 1887 they could not, for drawing andengraving, be produced for less than five times the amount.According to Hugo they were destroyed by fire shortly after thepublication of 1825.

Our regard for the Dance of Death is, now-a-days, chieflybiblio-archaeological, and there is no very modern attempt to reviveits ghastly charms; certainly on the Continent the aboundingDances receive periodical refurbishings, from a proper apprecia-tion of their interest, while all our modern books dealing with thesubject are issued on the pretext of reproduction of literary orartistic curiosities. There is one exception to this in Dagley's" Death's Doings," which, though precisely similar in design tomany of the okler works, abandons the idea and name of a pro-