The South Kensington museum is rich in ivory statuettes: many of them are very beautiful, although none is equal to a large sitting figure of the Virgin in the British museum or to two or three of the finest in the collections at Paris. Almost all of these statuettes represent the Virgin and Child; naturally, this would be a subject most frequently in demand for private oratories. Almost always the Virgin bears the tokens of her spiritual glory and privileges. To adopt the words of a French writer on another class of ivory carvings, “La Vierge mère et reine porte glorieuse les trois signes de son incomparable grandeur; la fleur de sa pureté immaculée, le fruit béni qui, loin de flétrir, a embelli sa fleur; et la couronne qui a consommé ses privilèges en couronnant ses vertus.” Generally speaking, the statuettes of the latter part of the thirteenth and throughout the fourteenth century are pure and religious in style, with an admirable expression of love and reverence in the figures, perfectly natural. There are two or three examples in the collections at South Kensington and the British museum, which may well claim all the praise which M. Labarte gives to a group of the coronation of the Virgin and to a Virgin and Child, both now preserved in the Louvre. He speaks of the simplicity of the composition; the refinement and truthfulness of the forms; the appropriate inflexions of the body and limbs; the imitation of real life; the just expression given to the faces; and the natural development and treatment of the draperies. So, again, we may quote his exact words, and say of more than one statuette in these great collections: “Quelle pureté dans le dessin, quelle noblesse dans la pose, quelle finesse dans le modèle, quelle ampleur et quelle élégance dans la disposition de la draperie! Cette statuette montré à quel haut degré de perfection était parvenue la sculpture chrétienne à la fin du [quatorzième] siècle.” The seals attached to mediæval deeds are important illustrations of the mode of treatment of the subject of the Virgin and Child, so common in the statuettes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Take, for instance, some in the Bodleian library. The seal of the prior and convent of Wyrmeseye (Wormegay) in Norfolk, attached to a deed of 1347, has a seated Virgin suckling the Child, her right hand uplifted. Another of the convent of Castle Acre, 1290, a similar subject. Another, of one of the parties to a deed of the archbishop of Canterbury, 1376, has the Virgin sitting, facing, and holding the Child standing on her lap, a sceptre in her right hand; another, showing the peculiar twist of the figure (presently to be noticed) is on the seal of the convent of West Acre, in Norfolk.