These mistakes have frequently been pointed out before, but the fact that they furnish an argument in the controversy about Holbein’s possible sojourn in Italy seems to have been less noticed. There is no positive evidence on this point, but arguing from a change in Holbein’s style after a certain period, in which the influence of Mantegna and Leonardo da Vinci is manifest, it is said by some of his biographers that he must have studied under these masters. It must be remembered, however, that in Italy at this time there were regular schools of painting, and it is difficult to suppose the masters above-named to have been as ignorant of anatomy as must have been the case had Holbein been their pupil. If his knowledge was derived, on the contrary, from contemporary German books, his mistakes become more comprehensible. The peasants’ alphabet, also composed of twenty-four letters but of a different character, is another of his best compositions. The museums of Basle and Dresden possess proofs of this alphabet. The letters are to be found in the publications of Froben, Cratander, and Bebelius, and Voltmann in his Bibliography of Holbein has given some specimens of them. Butsch reproduces the whole alphabet, as indeed he does several others, including that of the Dance of Death. The realistic scenes depicted in some of the letters, taken from life, are not always edifying, but this is the fault of the models rather than that of the artist. In A, we have musicians playing on their instruments, B to K show some couples dancing, L is a love-scene, M a fight with swords, O a boy holding a girl, while another boy is cooling his ardour by throwing water over him. In P the water is being offered to a girl from a pail, V shows a bowling ground, with a game of nine-pins, W the ride home. Our three specimens are taken not from this alphabet but from letters with similar subjects in the _Galen_. Of the same size as the peasants’ is the children’s alphabet, which is treated with the same happiness and talent of observation. Holbein must have been especially fond of children, for they figure in a great many of his compositions, titles, borders, and printers’ marks, and he paints them with a grace that Lützelberger, for it is probable that he engraved them, has caught most happily. The different incidents of juvenile life, chiefly games, are rendered with great realism. Sixteen letters of this alphabet can be found in the _Lactantius_ of Cratander and Bebelius of 1532, others in various Basle works. In a larger alphabet, children are engaged in all sorts of trades--forging, cooking, baking, building, carpentering, fishing, playing at coopering, at being bath-keepers and tanners. The W, which is rarely met with, represents a boy taking off a doctor with spectacles on his nose, whilst another is reading a book, and the third preparing some physic.