book is at all splendid, gold is very freely used, mostly in large spaces—backgrounds and the like—which, having been gilded over a solid ground with thick gold-leaf, are burnished till they look like solid plates of actual metal. The effect of this is both splendid and refined, the care with which gold is laid on, and its high finish, preventing any impression of gaudiness. The writing of this period becoming somewhat more definitely "Gothic," does not fall short of (it could not surpass) that of the previous half-century.

From this time a very gradual change—during which we have to note somewhat more of delicacy in drawing and refinement of colour—brings us to the first quarter of the thirteenth century; and here a sundering of the styles of the different peoples begins to be obvious. Throughout the twelfth century, though there is a difference, it is easier to distinguish an English or French book from a German or Italian by the writing than by the illumination; but after 1225 the first glance on opening the book will most often cry out at you, German, Italian, or French-English. For the rest, the illuminations still gain beauty and delicacy, the gold is even more universally brilliant, the colour still more delicious. The sub-art of the rubricator, as distinguished from the limner and the scribe, now becomes more important, and remains so down to the end of the fifteenth century. Work of great fineness and elegance, drawn mostly with pen, and always quite freely, in red and blue counterchanged, is lavished on the smaller initials and other subsidiaries of the pages, producing, with the firm black writing and the ivory tone of the vellum, a beautiful effect, even when the more solid and elaborate illumination is lacking. During this period, apart from theological and philosophical treatises, herbals, "bestiaries," &c., the book most often met with, especially when splendidly ornamented, is the Psalter, as sung in churches, to which is generally added a calendar, and always a litany of the saints. This calendar, by the way, both in this and succeeding centuries, is often exceedingly interesting, from the representations given in it of domestic occupations. The great initial B (Beatus vir qui non) of these books affords an opportunity to the illuminator, seldom missed, of putting forth to the full his powers of design and colour.

The last quarter of the thirteenth century brings us to the climax of illumination considered apart from book-pictures. Nothing can exceed the grace, elegance, and beauty of the drawing and the loveliness of the colour found at this period in the best-executed books; and it must be added that, though some work is rougher than other, at this time there would appear, judging from existing examples, to have been no bad work done. The tradition of the epoch is all-embracing and all-powerful, and yet no single volume is without a genuine individuality and life of its own. In short if all the other art of the Middle Ages had disappeared, they might still claim to be considered a great period of art on the strength of their ornamental books.

In the latter part of the thirteenth century we note a complete differentiation between the work of the countries of Europe. There are now three great schools: the French-Flemish-English, the Italian, and the German. Of these the first is of the most, the last of the least, importance. As to the relations between England and France, it must be said that, though there is a difference between them, it is somewhat subtle, and may be put thus: of some books you may say, This is French; of others, This is English; but of the greater part you can say nothing more than, This belongs to the French-English school. Of those that can be differentiated with something like certainty, it may be said that the French excel specially in a dainty and orderly elegance, the English specially in love of life and nature, and there is more of rude humour in them than in their French contemporaries; but he must be at once a fastidious and an absolute man who could say the French is better than the English or the English than the French.

The Norwich Psalter, in the Bodleian Library; the Arundel, Queen Mary's, and Tennison Psalters, in the British Museum, are among the finest of these English books: nothing can surpass their fertility of invention, splendour of execution, and beauty of colour.

This end of the thirteenth century went on producing splendid psalters at a great rate; but between 1260 and 1300 or 1320 the greatest industry of the scribe was exercised in the writing of Bibles, especially pocket volumes. These last, it is clear, were produced in enormous quantities, for in spite of the ravages of time many thousands of them still exist. They are, one and all, beautifully written in hands necessarily very minute, and mostly very prettily illuminated with tiny figure-subjects in the initials of each book. For a short period at the end of this and the beginning of the next century many copies of the Apocalypse were produced, illustrated copiously with pictures, which give us examples of serious Gothic designs at its best, and seem to show us what wall-pictures of the period might have been in the North of Europe.

The fourteenth century, the great mother of change, was as busy in making ornamental books as in other artistic work. When we are once fairly in the century a great change is apparent again in the style. It is not quite true to say that it is more redundant than its predecessor, but it has more mechanical redundancy. The backgrounds to the pictures are more elaborated; sometimes diapered blue and red, sometimes gold most beautifully chased with dots and lines. The borders cover the page more; buds turn into open leaves; often abundance of birds and animals appear in the borders, naturalistically treated (and very well drawn); there is more freedom, and yet less individuality in this work; in short the style, though it has lost nothing (in its best works) of elegance and daintiness—qualities so desirable in an ornamental book—has lost somewhat of manliness and precision; and this goes on increasing till, towards the end of the century, we feel that we have before us work that is in peril of an essential change for the worse. [In France "Bibles Historiaux," i.e., partial translations of the Bible, very copiously pictured, were one of the most noteworthy productions of the latter half of the century. The Bible taken in the tent of the French King at the battle of Poitiers, now in the British Museum, is a fine example.] The differentiation, too, betwixt the countries increases; before the century is quite over, England falls back in the race [though we have in the British Museum some magnificent examples of English illumination of the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries, e.g., "The Salisbury Book;" a huge Bible (Harl. i., e. ix.) ornamented in a style very peculiarly English. The Wyclifite translation of the Bible at the Museum is a good specimen of this style], and French-Flanders and Burgundy come forward, while Italy has her face turned toward Renaissance, and Germany too often shows a tendency toward coarseness and incompleteness, which had to be redeemed in the long last by the honesty of invention and fitness of purpose of her woodcut ornaments to books. Many most beautiful books, however, were turned out, not only throughout the fourteenth, but even in the first half of the fifteenth century. ["The Hours of the Duke of Berry" (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris), and the "Bedford Hours," in the British Museum, both French, are exceedingly splendid examples of this period.]

The first harbinger of the great change that was to come over the making of books I take to be the production in Italy of most beautifully-written copies of the Latin classics. These are often very highly ornamented; and at first not only do they imitate (very naturally) the severe hands of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but even (though a long way off) the interlacing ornament of that period. In these books the writing, it