The subjects in the alphabet of Death are the same as in the celebrated Basle frescoes. In each of these scenes, men and women of all sorts and conditions are invited to accompany him by Death, who will take no refusal nor hear of any previous engagement; from B and C the Pope and Emperor, to V the merchant, from the Hermit full of years W, to the child in its cradle V, the Last Judgment Z, finishing the series. The Latin alphabet (for there are some Greek initials) contains two subjects not to be found either in the frescoes or in the larger illustrations for the well-known satire, V the horseman with Death sitting behind like black care, and S the courtesan. In the Greek alphabet of inferior execution, certainly not the work of Lützelberger, of which we give three specimens, there are also two other subjects, the Σ and the Ω, a peasant and a smith. Curiously enough, an enlarged copy of this alphabet, but of much inferior merit, was used more than ten years before by Cephaleus of Strasburg, who also had a smaller series in the same coarse engraving. Some of the letters are given for comparison. A very curious alphabet, which although not equalling Lützelberger’s is of more than average execution, can be but little known to bibliographers, for as far as we have ascertained it only occurs in a few books published at Stella, in Spain. The scenes are selected from the _Simulachres_, and each letter is a complete little picture. Besides these alphabets a certain number of Dance of Death letters are to be found in other books of Basle, of which the V, with Death on horseback with an hour-glass, will serve as an example. They are also to be met with in books of Cologne. The Dance of Death, although intimately associated with the name of Holbein, was not his creation, the subject having always been a favourite one in the Middle Ages, and having been treated also by Albert Dürer. It was the general rule to represent Death, who although a skeleton was endowed with motion, with withered muscles. In an extremely precious book, printed by Meydenbach at Mayence, _Der Doten Tantz mit Figuren Clage unt Antwort schon von Allen Staten der Welt_, which is illustrated with forty-one curious cuts with the same subjects as Holbein’s alphabet, Death is thus represented, and the same thing is seen in other German editions of this work of the fifteenth century, and in the numerous French editions of the _Danse Macabre_ which appeared about the same time. Holbein, however, preferred to suppress these, and in so doing exhibited his ignorance of the anatomy of the human frame. Not only are the shoulder-blades and pelvis wrongly drawn, but the arm and thigh are represented each with two bones, whilst the fore-arm has only one.