It seems strange that the Belgian authorities should have bought at so great a sum ivories fixed in wooden frames, without some suspicion or at least without examination. The Liége dealer, however, is not the only one who has attempted impositions of this kind. About ten years ago there were four or five large ivories, of splendid appearance, in the hands of some London dealers. One was a triptych; another a diptych; a third a comb; and a fourth was a huge shrine with folding shutters and a tall richly decorated canopy, like the spire of a cathedral, covering a statuette of the Virgin and Child. (The statuette was probably genuine.) These ivories purported to be of the fourteenth century but were all new, and out of one shop or manufactory. The forgery in some respects was successful; but in every piece there was a distinct character and manner of execution—the same exactly in all of them—which proved their falseness. Several were traced back to a dealer at Amiens; and it is not now known what has become of any of them. The great shrine having been sold to an English collector for £500 was returned; and not very long ago was still to be seen in a shop window in the Strand and said to be, as if to make confusion worse confounded, an ivory carving of the _tenth_ century. This, whilst it would show perhaps ignorance on the part of the possessor, would be an argument that he might be innocent of knowledge of the forgery. The public institutions in England in which important ivories may be found are the British museum, the Ashmolean and Bodleian at Oxford, and the museum given to the town of Liverpool with noble liberality by Mr. Joseph Mayer. It is worthy of remark that scarcely any addition has been made to the ivories in the Ashmolean since the time when they were originally collected by Elias Ashmole nearly two hundred years ago; and they are of especial interest and value, though not many in number, because they can reasonably claim with scarcely an exception to be of English workmanship. A very large proportion of the other three great collections had also been gathered together before they became the property of the nation. The Liverpool ivories were chiefly obtained from the representatives of the late Gabriel Fejérváry; and, in like manner, the South Kensington museum—begun about the year 1853 and gradually enriched by the acquisition of some rare Spanish ivories and some of the best pieces from the Soltikoff collection, selected with excellent judgment by Mr. J. C. Robinson—has received from time to time during the last four or five years many large and important additions from the collection made by John Webb, Esq. More than two-thirds of the ivories in the British museum, and certainly a large number of the most valuable, had also been previously collected by a private person. THE END. INDEX.