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of defence. They are never represented in the Italian and Spanish portraiture of the time, an omission which would lead us to suppose that their use was relegated to the school of arms and to the duelling ground.

Fig. 1528. Dagger and sheath

Italian (Milanese), about 1620-30.

Ferdinand Rothschild bequest, British Museum

The ordinary cruciform-hilted daggers were still worn throughout the XVIIth century. Like the swords and rapiers of the time they were often of the finest possible workmanship; but they present no individual type, and in consequence are uninteresting. They have one feature, however, which is noticeable, and which marks their epoch, and that is, the elongation of the central block from which the quillons issue, a feature which suggests that a shell should distinguish the junction of the blade and the hilt; indeed, their hilts are much like those of the "pillow" swords described on pages 81 et seqq. We illustrate an example showing this elongation (Fig. 1528), which, with a large number of other art objects, was bequeathed by the late Baron Ferdinand Rothschild to the British Museum. Chiselled with great delicacy, plated with gold, and brilliantly blued, it is a very magnificent example of Italian swordsmith's work of the first half of the XVIIth century.

 

And so our story ends, the story of man's endeavour to protect himself and to attack an adversary by means of bronze, of iron, and of steel; a broken and incomplete record we must needs confess. Yet perhaps we should have made our record tedious had we gone into the byways and alleys of what we may term provincial forms. Nor would our readers have gained much had we made detailed inquiry into the forms of the semi-Oriental armour and arms adopted in the past by such countries as Russia, Poland,