It would be tedious and unprofitable to enumerate here the manifold works, great and small, which have been in times past attributed to the old Master by uncritical generations of credulous collectors. Almost every piece of sixteenth or seventeenth century bronze work in Germany has been at one time or another called a masterpiece by Peter Vischer. But one characteristic piece undoubtedly by him is the “Boy with Bagpipes” (_Knabe mit Dudelsack_), now in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg. (III. 26.) It is a charming little work, completely in the manner of the Nuremberg school and of the Master of the St. Maurice preserved in the Krafft House in the same town. Dürer, it will be remembered, dealt once in a popular little engraving with the same subject of a bagpiper, treating it, however, in a very different manner. When Peter Vischer died in 1529 he left the Foundry he had established at Nuremberg to his son Paul. Paul, as we have seen, had already shown signs of being anxious to leave his native town and to seek his fortune elsewhere. The trade of the bronze-workers in Nuremberg was no longer a flourishing industry. On succeeding to the foundry, therefore, Paul quickly seized his opportunity. He sold his inheritance to his brother Hans in the same year and left Nuremberg. He went to live in Mainz, and acquired there the rights of a burgher. [Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [CATHEDRAL, SCHWERIN 27. TOMB-PLATE OF DUCHESS HELENE VON MECKLENBURG] Hans remained to carry on his father’s business, and to complete a few of his father’s inchoate commissions. He is known henceforth as Hans der Giesser—Hans the Founder. He continued to use the trade mark of the House, and on more than one occasion signed in his father’s name as the lawful successor to the business. There is, for instance, a letter extant which is nominally written by Peter Vischer, but in reality by Hans in the deceased craftsman’s name, for it is dated January 25th, 1529, whereas Peter Vischer died on the sixth of that month. In that letter Hans begs the Duke Heinrich von Mecklenburg to send for a monument which had already been lying a whole year in the foundry, and for which payment is demanded. This reference fixes the date of the purely heraldic tomb-plate which commemorates the Duchess Helene von Mecklenburg. (Ill. 27.)