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sometimes incised, were generally produced in low relief, and the desired effect was not unfrequently obtained by such cutting away of parts of the surface of the slab as caused the representation to appear rather sunk in the stone than raised above it. As, in process of time, monumental art steadily advanced, and effigies in full relief were produced by artists of no mean capacity, so it became apparent, from the inconvenience and obstruction necessarily attendant upon the introduction of numerous monuments which would require to be raised above the pavement of churches, that, as a general rule, designs for monumental memorials should be expressed upon flat slabs of marble or stone; thus, while in comparatively rare instances the altar-tomb with its sculptured effigy continued in use, in the great majority of cases the coped coffin-lid gave way to the flat slab; and thus also both the monumental cross and the effigy came to be depicted by incised lines, instead of being executed in relief. Such incised stones would also possess the recommendation of being obtainable at far less cost than similar memorials wrought by the sculptor's chisel, and, at the same time, the designs thus engraved might (so far as the outline process would admit) be identical with those adopted in more costly and elaborately wrought productions.

Still, these incised monuments were exposed to one most serious objection; that is, of being surely and specially injured, if not actually obliterated, through the contant attrition to which, from their position, they would necessarily be subjected. This objection would not attach to monumental brasses, such being the hardness and consequent durability of the plates prepared for their manufacture that many of the earliest examples of these memorials yet in existence are still as essentially perfect