the same author's play, _The Varietie_,
as the treasure of an old country lady, is amusingly indicative of past
legacies or memorials, as well as of the tastes of the yeomanry: "A
toad-stone, two Turkies (Turquoise), six thumb-rings, three alderman's
seals, five gemels, and foure death's head." The enumeration concludes
with the uncomplimentary observation, "these are alehouse ornaments."

These death's-head rings were very commonly worn by the middle classes
in the latter part of the sixteenth and the early part of the
seventeenth centuries; particularly by such as affected a respectable
gravity. Luther used to wear a gold ring, with a small death's head in
enamel, and these words, "Mori saepe cogita" (Think oft on death); round
the setting was engraved "O mors, ero mors tua" (Death, I will be thy
death). This ring is preserved at Dresden. Shakspere, in his Love's
_Labour's Lost_ (Act V. scene 2), makes his jesting courtier, Biron,
compare the countenance of Holophernes to "a death's face in a ring." We
have already adverted to a similar ring worn by one of Shakspere's
fellow townsmen.

[Illustration: Fig. 182.]

[Illustration: Figs. 183 and 184.]

In the "Recueil des Ouvrages d'Orfeverie," by Gilles l'Egare, published
in the early part of the reign of Louis XIV., is an unusually good
design for one of these rings, which we copy, Fig. 182. It is entirely
composed of mortuary emblems, on a ground of black enamel. Fig. 183 is
an English memorial ring set with stones; on the circlet is engraved an
elongated skeleton, with crossbones above the skull, and a spade and
pick-axe at the feet; the ground is black enamel. It has been converted
into a memorial by its original purchaser, who caused to be engraved
withinside the hoop, "C.R., Jan. 30, 1649, Martyr." It is now in the
Londesborough collection, from whence we obtain Fig. 184, a very good
specimen of a mourning ring of the early part of the last century, with
which we take leave of this branch of the subject.

[Illustration: Fig. 185.]

[Illustration: Fig. 186.]

The jewellers of the last century do not seem to have bestowed the same
attention on design as their predecessors did. Rings appear to have
reached their highest excellence in design and execution in the
_ateliers_ of Venice. We meet with little originality of conception, and
certainly great inferiority of execution, in the works then issued. In
southern Europe, where jewellery is deemed almost a necessa