tion or even retouching of the Basle design, although it is attributed to him by popular tradition. Even of the engravings, the earliest, also given to Holbein, seems to have been the work of Hans Lutzenberger. But we have no intention here to enter into any of the archæological discussions as to the claims of different engravers, or as to the originality of Holbein's designs. The subject was one of universal popularity; and was used, repeated, varied again and again, as well in drawing as in accompanying verse, as far as the monotony of the subject permitted, through many ages and in many countries.

Admitted the extraordinary popularity of the idea of the "Dance of Death," the question arises, whether the paintings were executed to commemorate the already existing mystery and dance, or whether the dance was invented in imitation of the paintings. The evidence on this subject is conflicting and confused. The most ancient painting of the subject is generally admitted to be that at Minden in Westphalia, to which the date of 1383 is given. The earliest mention of the dance, as executed by living beings, belongs only to the following year, 1384. But there are many incidental reasons for believing, from the very nature of the popular amusements of the period, that the mystery of the Dance of Death, if not the popular dance itself, preceded its pictorial figuration on the walls of holy buildings. The fact has been positively affirmed by French authors. Michelet, who gave considerable study to the subject, never questions the point. "These dances in painting," he asserts, "were intended to represent real dances in nature and action. They certainly owed their origin to certain sacred representations which were played in the churches, the public squares before the churches, and the cemeteries, or even in the streets in processions. But in proportion as the strong fervour of the faithful weakened," he goes on to say, "the spectacle ceased to be a religious one. It recalled no thought of salvation or resurrection: it became drily moral, harshly philosophical, cynically materialist."

That the "Dance of Death" was known as a mystery or miracleplay in other countries besides England and France is clearly evidenced by the strong allusion to it by Cervantes in Don Quixote. The knight of the woful visage is there represented as meeting a party of strolling players or mummers, who are proceeding to enact the tragedy of the "Parliament of Death” in a neighbouring town. They are all dressed for the parts they have to play, and are presented to the wondering knight as Death, the Emperor, the Queen, and the Soldier,-the principal personages, that is to say, who figure in the well-known mural paintings. There is an Angel, however, also in the mystery; and the introducer of the company announces himself as the Devil, "who has the best part in the play." It appears probable that, in the Spanish representation, the Angel and Devil were introduced as combatants for the souls of the mortals carried off by Death, and were thus made to give some sort of complication to the too simple plot of the mere

"Dance of Death." The assertion of the Devil, however, that he is in possession of the best part in the play is contrary to the feeling of a drama in which Death, from the very title of the piece, and the fact that the very cart in which the mummers ride is called the "Chariot of Death," must be supposed to support the principal character. Would it be too preposterous to explain this little anomaly by assuming that the conceit of the actor who was the spokesman of the troop carried him somewhat beyond the truth?

Although reasonable precedence may be given to the mystery of the "Dance of Death" over the paintings on the same subject, yet it is very clear, from all collected records, that both burst forth very generally over the face of Europe about the same time. They first sprang up, too, at a period when both one and the other seemed a hideous mockery of the misery of those days. It was in times of war, pestilence, and famine, when the reminiscences of the plague and other mortal diseases which had swept off their thousands upon thousands in doomed cities were still young in the memories of their inhabitants, that the grotesque dance was executed in public places. Its introduction was immediately preceded by the black pest, which began all over Europe in 1373; the first record of the pantomimic dance being, as before intimated, in 1384. Not long previously that mysterious disease, of which all traces are now lost, commonly called "the sweating sickness," had committed fearful ravages throughout Europe. But what appears a still stranger charac teristic of the nature of this most extraordinary dance is, that it came like a pale, uncouth, and hideous copy, in living effigy and in its worst form, of a wild and apparently almost supernatural malady of the period, which had but scarcely passed away, and certainly could not have been forgotten.

This fell disease, "an emblem of God's wrath for levity in misery," as it was termed, was one so hideously incomprehensible as to have been without a name. It was a disease under the influence of which a strange frenzy seized its victims: hundreds of people danced involuntary maniac dances in the streets. Those who looked on were caught suddenly by the sickness: others seemed smitten by the epidemic even within doors, and rushed from their houses to join the dancing crew, unable to resist the frantic impulse. All joined in one great frenzied round until the chain was broken by force-an effort seldom made, as contact seemed to impart the contagion irresistibly to the breaker of the ring—or until they fell exhausted, and even dead with fatigue. Death, indeed, generally ensued upon a seizure by the dancing mania. Yet it was immediately following upon the disappearance of this hideous and unaccountable disease that the popular practice of executing the Dance of Death in the streets was adopted. It must, at that time, have appeared a fearful and unseemly reproduction, in mummery, of one of the greatest known scourges of humanity.

These bursts of frenzied gaiety, in the midst of the most despairing

moments of a people's history, were among the most tragic characteristics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They were almost infernal in their character, and seemed inspired by a satanic irony. That the living representation of the Dance of Death was not originally looked upon as an exhibition of popular mirth, but considered not only as a "morality" in the dramatic sense, but as highly moral in its effect, is thus obvious. How it degenerated into a scene of wild revelry is not very clear. Whatever its character in England, of which scarcely any record remains, old French authors, although they admit that the dance was well known among the Germans and Flamands, all agree in asserting that "it had a peculiar charm for the English," and insist that it was first introduced into France during the wars with Burgundy and England by the English soldiery, who were frantic in its practice. In Paris, according to French records, which are copious enough, it was first publicly danced immediately after the cessation of the plague and famine, which had desolated the city during these disastrous wars, and more especially during the tenancy of Paris by the English.

Be this true, or be it only spite on the part of hostile chroniclers, it is very well authenticated that the "Danse Macabre,” as it was more popularly called, or spectacle of the "Dance of Death," was acted in Paris, and in the cemetery of the Innocents, in the autumn of 1424, the very year when the famous painting of the subject was begun on the same spot in the month of August.

The Cimetière des Innocents, the great central burial-place of the great city of Paris, the site of which is now occupied by the market of the same name, was the favourite spot for Parisian meeting and greeting in the fifteenth century. Singularly as the spot may seem to have been chosen by the reckless and fantastic spirit of the age, it was the popular place of rendezvous for the citizens of Paris at that period, as the garden of the Tuileries is to the present generation. In those days it bore the less attractive title of the " Charniers," or "Charnel-houses." But in spite of the grimness of this appellation, and the dismal nature of the spot, it was no less the central scene of the levity and gaiety of the Parisians. To speak in modern language, the Charniers were "all the fashion." The dead were kept warm in their graves by the concourse of the living. Men trampled joyously and thoughtlessly on the bones of their fathers; and chattered, and jested, and made love, as if the charnel-house were a perfumed salon, and gave rendezvous for the gratification of their passions over the half-open sepulchres, which they might soon be called upon to fill in their turn as polluted carcasses. To offer some explanation for the appalling levity of this action, it will be necessary to remember the long years of warfare, plague, and famine, which immediately preceded the practice. Fate had familiarised the Parisians with death in its worst shape. By an easy transition, habit familiarised them with his house of reception. Death was deprived thus of more than half its terrors. By one step more it became a pastime.

For many centuries the ghastly spot, where Paris had heaped together in an enormous mass almost all its generations of inhabitants, had been haunted only at night by robbers and ribaudes. But at the commencement of the fifteenth century a large chapel was constructed at one of its extremities; and charnel-houses, adorned with all the picturesque fancy of the day, were erected round the other three sides. The long alluvium of mortal corruption had raised the whole ground to many feet above the neighbouring streets; and the new structures formed a sort of Temple of Death, in which the dead dominated the living, and the living, in turn, came to gambol in triumphant mockery and contempt over the dead. The lower part of the surrounding charnel-house was composed of arcades, beneath which were raised the principal tombs, and on the walls of which was shortly to be limned the lengthy picture of the "Dance of Death." These arcades, like a garden alley, offered a place of rendezvous for those who sought a more shady or obscure retirement. Above them were upper stories and lines of garrets, in which the bones of the dead were hung up, when taken half-rotten from reopened tombs.

In front of this strange amalgamation of cloisters and shambles, rows of booths were temporarily erected, where fair stall-keepers held forth ribbons, and laces, and plumes, and glittering chains, and smiled alluringly upon purchasers; and the marchandes des modes of the day spread out attractive embroideries, and padded ladies' head-dresses; and graver shopmen exhibited silks and stuffs; and public writers had their tables, on which to indite the assignation or the billet-dour, and drove a thriving trade among the charnel-houses. Whilst in the midst the crowd thronged thoughtlessly, or stopped to chatter or chaffer at the stalls; and gaily-dressed young nobles followed about the pretty wives of the citizens; and students chucked flower-girls under the chin. In short, here it was that all the world did as the world might do now, although after somewhat coarser fashion. The Cemetery of the Innocents was the Fancy Fair of Death in his own dwelling. What more worthy theatre, then, for the representation of the degraded mystery called "La Danse Macabre" than this strange ball-room of Life in Death, this pulpit of Death in Life? And here it was that the revelry of the "Dance of Death" was practised in all its frightful orgies.

Beyond the explanation already given of the state of feeling which may have induced the still famishing, weakly, scarcely-living denizens of a city so frequently and severely visited by destruction and desolation to have accepted the sight of death in effigy as an agreeable spectacle, or, at best, to have contemplated it in its comic point of view as a "morality," we can arrive at but one other as natural and probable. May it not have been looked upon by the poor, wretched, harassed, and oppressed citizens of Paris as bearing a political significance, consolatory to their hearts? The dance was made to represent the inevitable fate of all, the great as well as the little, the high as well as the low.

It combined all ranks in one fearful equality,-the equality of the grave. It was the levelling mystery of universal "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality;" those vain symbolical words of incantation, which have always exercised so great a charm over Parisian minds. May it not have been welcomed in such a sense? From some of the remarks of old French chroniclers, it appears probable that this vague notion may have tended to popularise the disgusting dance. Not only is it mentioned as "of curious device and singular fantasy, being mightily laughable and diverting," but the objectors to the practice and its railers, who evidently wielded a certain degree of authority, are attacked as the enemies of "a poor people's gaiety." In truth, the struggling citizen and starving artisan, and all the other serfs of the civilisation of the day, may have more easily resigned themselves to their inevitable lot, and even felt a flattering satisfaction in its symbolical embodiment, when they saw themselves dragged away in effigy to the grave in such excellent company as that of emperors, kings, nobles, warriors, bishops, abbots, and even popes. If any lesson of morality was wrought in the terrible dance, a lesson, sweet to the hearts of the poor and lowly, a lesson of social and political equality, in the hands of the general destroyer, may have been sought and found in it also.

To modern ideas the mummery of the "Dance of Death,” as executed by gangs of men in the public streets and places of cities, must have been devoid of all morality, mirth, or art. The sense of the morality soon ceased among men, as we gather. There could have been no real mirth in the awfully dreary jest. In an artistic point of view the exhibition must have been simply hideous. The mummers in the Danse Macabre, as it was executed in the Cemetery of the Innocents, over the mouldering relics of mortality, are described as being half of them attired in tightly-fitting black dresses, upon which were painted the bones of skeletons. They wore masks representing images of skulls, evidently of the most uncouth nature. Each of these frightful objects, as it advanced up the middle space of the cemetery, which was cleared for the performance, rivalled its fellow in an exhibition of the most distorted and ludicrous gestures in slow dancing step. Each had one of the many representatives of the hierarchy of humanity, from pope to peasant, fantastically apparelled to represent his part. The art bestowed must have been of the crudest. This representation of the skeleton of man, with all its most awkward and angular forms, twisted into a thousand ridiculous postures, must have worn the air of some fearful irony. Equally odious must have been the grinning skull surmounting that last nudity of man which instinct bids us cover with the concealment of the earth.

Of the nature of the dance finally executed by the assembled procession, we can find no record whatever. The measure danced appears, however, to have been of a lively and animated description. At all events, the tune of "The Shaking of the Sheet," so closely connected