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Caelatura, Antique Plate

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MEDIEVAL PLATE.
85
decorative matters. Next succeeded the 17th century, that epoch of civil wars devastating the whole extent of Europe : the bitterest poverty, oppressing each land in its turn, sent every ounce of plate that was not consecrated, and wherever the Calvinists got the upper hand that too sharing the general fate, to the mint, to reappear in the rude coinage of the times 3 for the pay of troops, and to make the war support itself. It is need­less to multiply examples : every one acquainted with numisma­tics knows how all the corporation and college plate of England was converted into the unshapely coins and yet ruder siege-pieces of the latter years of Charles I.'s reign. It was thus that the domestic plate entirely disappeared, the few examples left being the small articles either overlooked, or previously gone out of sight. Of that consecrated to religious uses, a tolerable sprink­ling has been preserved : some was defended by the sanctity of the places containing it; some was in many cases rescued from plundering zealots by the precaution of its guardians, and re­stored to its wonted place in quieter times, and thus survived until its safety—though devotion, its former keeper, be extinct— is secured by its newly-created archaeological value. Such pieces, however, being made for certain definite uses, generally to contain relics, are modelled after one pattern, that of a chapel, a coffret, or a bust, and exhibit little of the licentious ingenuity which de­signed the subtleties in silver that encountered the astonished guests at the tables of the dukes of Anjou, of their rivals of Bur­gundy, and, in a greater or less degree, of the wealthy merchants of Flanders and of England. The following items will fully bear out these observations: they are extracted from the vast mass of plate, mostly decorative, mentioned above.
" No. 76. A wheelbarrow resting upon a foot carved with vine-leaves, which rests upon iv little lions: the said foot is
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