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as when first laid down. Brasses, accordingly, when once established in use, continued in favour for the purpose of monumental commemoration until the close of the era of the Renaissance.

In our own country, very considerable numbers of brasses yet remain, many of them being in a state of preservation truly wonderful, when their age and the perils to which they have been exposed are taken into consideration; while others exhibit the effect of every variety of injury. Besides the brasses still in existence, a vast series of despoiled stones, from which the original brasses have been torn, give a sad testimony both to the extensive adoption of these memorials at one period, and to the sacrilegious violence and spoliation to which they were subjected at another. On the Continent but few brasses have escaped, and these are chiefly to be found in the churches of Belgium and of certain parts of Germany.^[1]

A degree of interest, second only to that which is claimed by the brasses themselves, is attached to the slabs which have been despoiled of their brasses. They will frequently repay attentive study, as they, unless mutilated, represent the composition of the lost brass with the utmost fidelity, and in many instances supply us with examples of designs of which there are no known existing specimens; and it is not uncommon for us thus to learn that brasses have been lost which were probably finer and more interesting than even the most splendid which yet remain. Such despoiled slabs thickly stud our larger and more important churches, and may also be found in almost every church in which the ignorant