owing, in a great degree, to the nature of the paper on which they are impressed. It were almost to be wished that this perplexing evidence against Holbein's title to the invention of the work before us had never existed, and that he had consequently been left in the quiet possession of what so well accords with his exquisite pencil and extraordinary talents. True it is, that the person to whom we owe this stubborn testimony, has manifested a much more intimate acquaintance with the mode of conveying his pious ejaculations to the Lady Abbess in the quaintest language that could possibly have been chosen, than with the art of giving an accurate account of the prints in question. Yet it seems scarcely possible that he should have used the word _imagined_, which undoubtedly expresses originality of invention, and not the mere act of copying, if he had referred to an engraver on wood, whom he would not have dignified with the appellation of a painter on whom he was bestowing the highest possible eulogium. There would also have been much less occasion for the author's hyperbolical fears on the part of Death in the case of an engraver, than in that of a painter. He has stated that the rainbow subject, meaning probably that of the Last Judgment, was left unfinished; but it appears among the engravings in his edition. He must, therefore, have referred to a painting, with which likewise the expression "bold shadows and perspective," seem better to accord than with a slight engraving on wood. He had also seen the subject of the waggon with the wine casks in its unfinished state, and in this case we may almost with certainty pronounce it to have been a painting, as the cut of it does not appear in the first edition, furnishing, at the same time, an argument against Holbein's claim; nor may it be unimportant to add that the dedicator, a religious person, and probably a man of some eminence, was much more likely to have been acquainted with the painter than with the engraver. The dedicator also stamps the work as originating at Lyons; and Frellon, its printer, in a complaint against a Venetian bookseller, who pirated his edition, emphatically describes it as exclusively belonging to France. Again, it is improbable that the dedicator, whoever he was, should have preferred complimenting the engraver of the cuts, who, with all his consummate skill, must, in point of rank and genius, be placed below the painter or designer; and it is at the same time remarkable that the name of Holbein is not adverted to in any of the early and genuine editions of the work, published at Lyons, or any other place, whilst his designs for the Bible have there been so pointedly noticed by his friend the poet Borbonius.