After all, there seems to be a fatality of ambiguity in the account of the Basle paintings ascribed to Holbein; and that of the Dance of Death has not only been placed by several writers on the walls, inside and outside, of houses, but likewise in the fish-market; on the walls of the church-yard of St. Peter; and even in the cathedral itself of Basle; and, therefore, amidst this chaos of description, it is absolutely impossible to arrive at any conclusion that can be deemed in any degree satisfactory. We are now to enter upon the investigation of a work which has been somewhat erroneously denominated a "Dance of Death," by most of the writers who have mentioned it. Such a title, however, is not to be found in any of its numerous editions. It is certainly not a dance, but rather, with slight exception, a series of admirable groups of persons of various characters, among whom Death is appropriately introduced as an emblem of man's mortality. It is of equal celebrity with the Macaber Dance, but in design and execution of considerable superiority, and with which the name of Hans Holbein has been so intimately connected, and that great painter so generally considered as its inventor, that even to doubt his claim to it will seem quite heretical to those who may have founded their opinion on internal evidence with respect to his style of composition. In the year 1538 there appeared a work with the following title, "Les simulachres et historiees faces de la mort, autant elegamment pourtraictes, que artificiellement imaginées." A Lyon Soubz lescu de Coloigne, 4to. and at the end, "Excudebant Lugduni Melchior et Gaspar Trechsel fratres, 1538." It has forty-one cuts, most exquisitely designed and engraved on wood, in a manner which several modern artists only of England and Germany have been competent to rival. As to the designs of these truly elegant prints, no one who is at all skilled in the knowledge of Holbein's style and manner of grouping his figures, would hesitate immediately to ascribe them to that artist. Some persons have imagined that they had actually discovered the portrait of Holbein in the subject of the nun and her lover; but the painter, whoever he may have been, is more likely to be represented in the last cut as one of the supporters of the escutcheon of Death. In these designs, which are wholly different from the dull and oftentimes disgusting Macaber Dance, which is confined, with little exception, to two figures only, we have the most interesting assemblage of characters, among whom the skeletonized Death, with all the animation of a living person, forms the most important personage; sometimes amusingly ludicrous, occasionally mischievous, but always busy and characteristically occupied.