The other is a complete row from a book cover in the British museum: divided into thirty compartments, each an inch by three quarters of an inch. It is impossible in a woodcut to do more than attempt to give some idea of the marvellous delicacy and excellence of the panel itself, which is beyond all comparison the very finest ivory existing of its peculiar school. Small, even minute, as the divisions are, they plainly tell the story which each is intended to convey; although in some of them there are as many as seven or eight figures, finished with admirable distinctness and perfection. The subjects in this row are the offering of St. Joachim; his departure into the desert; the message of the angel to St. Joachim; the message to St. Anne; the meeting of St. Joachim and St. Anne at the gate; and the birth of the Blessed Virgin. The etching represents some beautiful panels in open work, at South Kensington. Nothing is more difficult than the determination of the particular country in which many of the ivories of mediæval times were carved. All acknowledge this, and they the most readily who have had the widest experience and the best opportunities of examination. It has long been a custom to set down almost every ivory of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as Flemish or French, leaving but few except the Italian marriage caskets to the credit of other countries. But (not to speak of Germany) there can be no question that carvings in ivory were then much sought after and bought in England, and that there must have been numerous English artists. Two unquestionable examples of the English school of the fourteenth century are in the British museum: a triptych which was carved for Grandison, bishop of Exeter; and one leaf of a diptych which was also made for the same great prelate, and still retains slight traces of the painting of his coat of arms. A woodcut is given (p. 117) of the single leaf. Generally, we may agree with Sir Digby Wyatt, who says in the very interesting and able lecture to which reference has been already made (p. 5), that “a peculiar _nez retroussé_, a dimpled, pouting, and yet smiling mouth, a general _gentillesse_ of treatment, and a brilliant yet rapid mode of technical execution, stamp the French work with an almost unmistakable character. To the English style may be assigned a position midway between the French and the second Italian manner. It does not exhibit the gaiety and tenderness of the former, nor has it quite the grandeur of the latter, but it is marked by a sober earnestness of expression in serious action which neither of those styles possesses.” We may further observe that the English school had less of the monotony and mannerism which are the derogatory features of continental examples of the same period; in fact, English gothic ivories have both a purity and a variety of treatment on a par with the admirable characteristics of contemporary architecture in this country.