his Wanderjahre supplied a decorator of a skill altogether outshining that shown in the rather tasteless architectural work, varied with groups of children, produced by Urs Graf, though Holbein himself was content to begin in this style. In his most characteristic work the footpiece of the border illustrates some classical scene, Mutius Scaevola and Porsenna, the death of Cleopatra, or Quintus Curtius leaping into the abyss; less commonly a scriptural one, such as the death of John the Baptist. The most elaborate of his titlepages was that to the _Tabula_ of Cebes (1521), in which little children crowd through the gate of life to meet all the varied fortunes which life brings. Delightful humour is shown in an often used headpiece and tailpiece, showing villagers chasing a fox and returning home dancing. During 1517 and the following year, when Hans Holbein was absent from Basel, his brother Ambrosius worked there on the same lines, and decorated, among other books, More's _Utopia_. After his return to Basel in 1519, Hans Holbein remained at work there until 1526, and it was during this period that his book-illustrations, properly so called, were executed, including those to the Apocalypse and his two most famous pieces of bookwork, his _Dance of Death_ and _Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones_, both of which were first published in 1538 at Lyon by Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel. These (with perhaps some exceptions) and many of his other designs[45] were cut in wood by Hans Lutzelburger who signed a Holbein titlepage to a German New Testament printed by Thomas Wolff in 1523, and who, if rightly identified with the Hans Formschneider with whose widow the Trechsels were in correspondence in 1526 and 1527, must have died about the time that Holbein left Basel. Pen copies, moreover, of some of the cuts of the _Dance of Death_ are preserved at the Berlin Museum, and one of these is dated 1527, so that there can be no question that the originals belong to this period of Holbein's life, and the British Museum possesses a set of proofs of forty out of the original series of forty-one, printed on four sheets, ten on a sheet. It has been conjectured that the occupations of some of the great personages whom Death is depicted as seizing may have been considered as coming under the offence of _scandalum magnatum_ and so have caused the long delay before the blocks were used, but as this explanation does not apply to the illustrations to the Old Testament it seems inadequate. As published in 1538 by the Trechsels the cuts are accompanied by French quatrains from the pen of Gilles Corrozet and other appropriate matter, and have prefixed to them a titlepage reading: _Les Simulachres & Historiees Faces de la Mort, autant elegamm[=e]t pourtraictes que artificiellement imaginees. A Lyon, soubz lescu de Coloigne, M.D.XXXVIII._ A second edition with Latin instead of French verses was published by Jean and