Mourning jewellery was extremely popular in England towards the end of the eighteenth and in the early part of the nineteenth century. The variety of design in objects of the kind then in use, and the ingenuity displayed in their production, may well be judged from a collection numbering upwards of one hundred and fifty specimens in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Some mementoes of the deceased are simply miniature portraits, as well as cameos and silhouettes, the miniature sometimes taking the form of a single eye set round with pearls or diamonds. But in most cases it appears to have been the custom to wear in lockets, brooches, and rings microscopic devices--works of infinite patience and skill--wrought in hair, with initials and other designs cunningly worked in seed pearls. There were also, sometimes, paintings in _grisaille_ (Pl. XLVII, 2, 3). These often represented a lady in mourning garb weeping over a funeral urn, in the style of the ornament worn by Mr. Wemmick, the attorney's clerk in _Great Expectations_, of whom Dickens gives the following inimitable description: "I judged him to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements; for he wore at least four mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, too, that several rings and seals hung at his watch chain, as if he were quite laden with remembrances of departed friends." Further on Mr. Wemmick himself describes his personal jewellery, and concludes by remarking: "I always take 'em. They're curiosities. And they're property. They may not be worth much, but, after all, they're property and portable.... My guiding-star always is, Get hold of portable property." The painted brooches backed with hair and set round with pearls form, as a matter of fact, very pretty jewels, in spite of the sombreness of their subject and the trivial sentimentality of their mottoes, which run in this vein: "Whose hair I wear--I loved most dear." Mourning jewellery was usually set with pearls, garnets, or more often jet. The last, until a short while ago, was in universal favour, and was fashioned into all sorts of ornaments. It fortunately now meets with but little demand. The same applies to hair jewellery, of human hair woven in many intricate plaitings into brooches, rings, bracelets, and chains. The brooches of about the "forties" have a broad border inscribed with the word "Memory," etc., in Gothic letters on black enamel, and in the centre a panel of plaited hair. The custom of wearing ornaments composed of such sombre and unpleasing material has now to all intents and purposes ceased, though it is carried on to a certain extent in France, where _ouvrages en cheveux_ in the form of bracelets and lockets are still worn as _précieux souvenirs de famille_.