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THE DANCE OF DEATH.

been done after the year 1547,, as eight of themdid not appear till that time.

But it has entirely escaped the knowledge ofall the biographers of Holbein, that he painted aDance of Death in fresco, upon the walls of thepalace of Whitehall, which was consumed byfire in 1697. This curious fact is ascertainedfrom two sets of nineteen very indifferent etchingsfrom the wooden cuts, by one Nieuhoff; theywere never published, but copies of them pre-sented to the artist's friends, with manuscript de-dications in the Dutch language, in which hespeaks of the above-mentioned paintings at White-hall. The book has the following title engravedin a border: " Imagines Mortis, or the DeadDance of Hans Holbeyn, Painter of King Henrythe Vllltb." The author, in one of these de-dications, addressed to the Right HonourableWilliam Benting, informs him, that cc he hadmet with the scarce little work of H. Holbeyn inwood, which he had himself painted as large aslife in fresco, on the walls of Whitehall ; that hehad followed the original as nearly as possible,and had presumed to lay his copy before him asbeing bom in the same palace; that he consi-dered the partiality which every one has for theplace of his nativity, and that therefore an ac-count of what was curious and remarkable therein,and of what was then no more, as being destroyedby a fatal fire, must of course prove acceptable,particularly as there were hardly any more re-