4TH CENTURY]

Ivory mirror backs lent themselves well to decorations of a more
secular nature: these are often carved with the Siege of the Castle
of Love, and with scenes from the old Romances; tournaments were
very popular, with ladies in balconies above pelting the heroes
with roses as large as themselves, and the tutor Aristotle "playing
horse" was a great favourite. Little elopements on horseback were
very much liked, too, as subjects; sometimes rows of heroes on steeds
appear, standing under windows, from which, in a most wholesale
way, whole nunneries or boarding-schools seem to be descending to
fly with them. One of these mirrors shows Huon of Bordeaux playing
at chess with the king's daughter: another represents a castle,
which occupies the upper centre of the circle, and under the window
is a drawbridge, across which passes a procession of mounted knights.
One of these has paused, and, standing balancing himself in a most
precarious way on the pommels of his saddle, is assisting a lady to
descend from a window. Below are seen others, or perhaps the same
lovers, in a later stage of the game, escaping in a boat. At the
windows are the heads of other ladies awaiting their turn to be
carried off.

[Illustration: IVORY MIRROR CASE, 1340]

An ivory chest of simple square shape, once the property of the Rev.
Mr. Bowle, is given in detail by Carter in the Ancient Specimens,
and is as interesting an example of allegorical romance as can
be imagined. Observe the attitude of the knight who has laid his
sword across a chasm in order to use it as a bridge. He is proceeding
on all fours, with unbent knees, right up the sharp edge of the blade!

Among small box shrines which soon developed in Christian times
from the Consular diptychs is one, in the inventory of Roger de
Mortimer, "a lyttle long box of yvory, with an ymage of Our ladye
therein closed."

The differences in expression between French, English, and German
ivory carvings is quite interesting. The French faces and figures
have always a piquancy of action: the nose is a little retroussee
and the eyelids long. The German shows more solidity of person,
less transitoriness and lightness about the figure, and the nose
is blunter. The English carvings are often spirited, so as to be
almost grotesque in their strenuousness, and the tool-mark is visible,
giving ruggedness and interest.

Nothing could be more exquisite than the Gothic shrines in ivory
made in the