peculiar features of Polish armour. This, until the middle of the sixteenth century, was modelled on German and Italian; later on, there is a change in the breastplates, the so-called caracenes coming into use, which are cuirasses of movable metal scales. The arms of attack are always rich in ornament; never more so, however, than they became after the victories of King John Sobieski over the Turks. The booty he won, particularly at Vienna in 1683, doubtless contributed by its artistic value to produce the preference for magnificent armour and weapons which we notice in the latter seventeenth century. The sword-cutlers and goldsmiths of Cracow learned the art of Oriental ornamentation of armour from the Armenians then living here, and practised it during the two centuries that followed. This Oriental style was not limited to arms of attack; it was applied to all implements of war; we observe it, e.g., in the manufacture of Polish tents after the Turkish fashion, the tent-makers giving an artistic aspect to the cloths, which are richly embroidered on the inside. Examples of their work are found in the museums of Cracow. Embroidery generally reached, even in the early sixteenth century, a high stage of perfection at the hands of artizans called "silk hafters"; it is easy to see that they were aided in their work by real artists. A chasuble in the cathedral Treasury, being a gift of the Crown Marshal Peter Kmita, of date 1504, is a fine specimen of embroidered work (illustration 95). Of King Sigismund Augustus it is reported, that twenty-four arrases were made at his order in Flanders, being reproductions of cartoons by Raphael (but done long after his death, in 1560), which cost him 100,000 ducats. They adorned the royal apartments in the Wawel, but were, in 1794, transported to Gatchina, near St. Petersburg, where they have been ever since. Their subject was The Flood, and they illustrated, in a series of scenes, all the events of the biblical narrative from the creation of Adam and Eve to the building of the Tower of Babel. This custom of covering the walls with arrases or gobelins remained in force down to the late eighteenth century. In the Cathedral there are some that were designed by Snyders, representing the story of Cain and Abel;
