Without venturing to give an opinion whether the cuts were engraved in Germany, Holland, or in the Low Countries, the drawing of many of the figures appears to correspond with the idea that I have formed of the style of Greek art, such as it was in the early part of the fifteenth century. St. John was the favourite apostle of the Greeks, as St. Peter was of the church of Rome; and as the Revelations were more especially addressed to the churches of Greece, they were more generally read in that country than in Western Europe. Artists mostly copy, in the heads which they draw, the general expression of the country[II-39] to which they belong, and where they have received their first impressions; and in the Apocalypse the character of several of the heads appears to be decidedly Grecian. The general representation, too, of several visions would seem to have been suggested by a Greek who was familiar with that portion of the New Testament which was so generally perused in his native land, and whose annunciations and figurative prophecies were, in the early part of the fifteenth century, commonly supposed by his countrymen to relate to the Turks, who at that time were triumphing over the cross. With them Mahomet was the Antichrist of the Revelations, and his followers the people bearing the mark of the beast, who were to persecute, and for a time to hold in bondage, the members of the church of Christ. As many Greeks, both artists and scholars, were driven from their country by the oppression of the Turks several years before the taking of Constantinople in 1453, I am induced to think that to a Greek we owe the designs of this edition of the Apocalypse. In the lower division of the twenty-third cut, _m_, representing the fight of Michael and his angels with the dragon, the following shields are borne by two of the heavenly host. [Footnote II-39: Witness Rembrandt, who never gets rid of the Dutch character, no matter how elevated his subject may be.] [Illustration] [Illustration] The crescent, as is well known, was one of the badges of Constantinople long previous to its capture by the Turks. The sort of cross in the other shield is very like that in the arms of the knights of St. Constantine, a military order which is said to have been founded at Constantinople by the Emperor Isaac Angelus Comnenus, in 1190. The above coincidences, though trifling, tend to support the opinion that the designs were made by a Greek artist. It is, however, possible, that the badges on the shields may have been suggested by the mere fancy of the designer, and that they may equally resemble the heraldic bearings of some order or of some individuals of Western Europe.