[Illustration: FIG. 21.--BRONZE INCENSE BURNER AND INCENSE BOAT. (_In the Victoria and Albert Museum._)] It may be contended that tombs and monuments cannot be collected, but those who visit such places may fill their notebooks with interesting data, and they may carry away with them accurate records and rubbings of the monumental tablets and the brasses on the tombs (for instructions how to take rubbings, see Wrinkles, p. 393). Such rubbings of old brasses can be kept in a portfolio or mounted and hung upon walls. They form a record, too, of the engraver's art, which was modified and altered to suit the change which went on in architectural design and to some extent in social and religious customs. The variety of brasses is seen when a good collection of rubbings is classified and arranged according to style, period, or locality. Some districts yield prolific returns. Throughout the counties of Gloucester, Somerset, and Norfolk many may be obtained, the more interesting specimens being secured from tombs dating from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. From such a series armorial representation as it became less real and of smaller importance can be traced. The costumes of the period, too, are very clearly shown, for in such a collection of brasses the value of armour in war is seen to change. In the earlier examples there is the chain mail of the cross-legged knights as seen on the early brasses of the Crusaders, the mediæval armour of the Middle Ages when it had reached its strength, and the brasses of the Stuart days when the ornamental armour of that period had to a large extent lost its utility. The ecclesiastical brasses on the tombs of bishops and other church dignitaries show the change which took place very gradually in the vestments worn, and indicate the alteration in ecclesiastical ritual in the cathedrals and churches at the time of the Reformation. The dissolution of the monasteries and the sacrilege which took place in the dismantled churches and religious houses caused valuable relics to be sold for old metal, and it was then that many old monuments and tombs lost their brasses. The influence of book knowledge and the change which came about in the style of script after the introduction of the printing-press is seen in the evolution of the lettering on church brasses. Indeed, in some of the older ones the form of the letters is the only indication left of the date of their engraving. [Illustration: FIG. 22.--THE COPPER-GILT CROSS ON ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL.]