Of greater importance, however, than the information to be gleaned from pictorial and literary sources is that derived from the actual jewels themselves, a considerable number of which, through all the changes and chances of more than three centuries, have been handed down still practically intact, and retaining the chief feature of their decoration--their exquisite enamel. Shakespeare, while appreciating the charm of its harmonious combination of colours, recognised, it appears, the delicacy of this beautiful medium, when in the _Comedy of Errors_ he makes Adriana say:-- I see the jewel best enamelled Will lose his beauty; yet the gold bides still, That others touch, and often touching will Wear gold. The New Learning, which made itself felt in England during the reign of Henry VII, began at this time to exercise a direct influence on the choice of the designs of jewels and on the arrangement of their ornamentation. As witnesses of the intellectual revival, they often took emblematic forms, bearing in exquisite enamel-work fancy mottoes and devices, generally obscure in their interpretation, and intended to express the sentiments of their wearers, or those of donors, regarding the presumed state of mind of their recipients. The passion for these reached its height in the golden days of Good Queen Bess, when it became the fashion for the bejewelled gallants who fluttered like a swarm of glittering insects around her to display their wit and ingenuity in devising jewelled emblems as fit presents to the Virgin Queen. Thus in the list of costly articles of jewellery offered to Elizabeth, we meet with the present, made in Christmas week 1581, by some courtiers disguised as maskers, of a jewel in the form of "a flower of golde, garnished with sparcks of diamonds, rubyes, and ophales, with an agathe of her Majestis phisnamy and a perle pendante, with devices painted in it." The love for strange devices and enigmatical mottoes was fostered by the spirit of an age that witnessed the production of Lyly's _Euphues_ and Spenser's _Faerie Queene_; while Elizabeth's colossal vanity prompted the dedication to her of highly laudatory mottoes, like the inscription on a jewel belonging to Mr. Pierpont Morgan: HEI MIHI QUOD TANTO VIRTUS PERFUSA DECORE NON HABET ETERNOS INVIOLATA DIES. Few of the jewels of this stirring period display a more charming symbolism than those produced after the defeat and destruction of the Spanish Armada, whereon England is figured as an ark floating securely and tranquilly on a troubled sea, surrounded by the motto, SAEVAS TRANQUILLA PER UNDAS. The most remarkable of these Armada jewels is Mr. Pierpont Morgan's, just mentioned, and another of the same class in the Poldi-Pezzoli Museum, Milan.