As to whether these cuts were engraved in England or no I shall not venture to give an opinion. I am, however, satisfied that they were neither designed nor engraved by the artists who designed and engraved the cuts in the Apocalypse, the History of the Virgin, and the Poor Preachers’ Bible. With respect to drawing, expression, and engraving, the cuts of the Alphabet are decidedly superior to those of every block-book, and generally to all wood engravings executed previous to 1500, with the exception of such as are by Albert Durer, and those contained in the Hypnerotomachia, an Italian rhapsody, with wood-cuts supposed to have been designed by Raffaele or Andrea Mantegna, and printed by Aldus at Venice, 1499. Although the cuts of the Alphabet may not have been engraved in England, it is, however, certain that the volume had been at rather an early period in the possession of an Englishman. The cover consists of a double fold of thick parchment, on the inside of which, between the folds, there is written in large old English characters what I take to be the name “Edwardus Lowes.” On the blank side of the last leaf there is a sketch of a letter commencing “Right reverent and wershipfull masters and frynds; In the moste loweliste maner that I canne or may, I here recomende me, duely glade to her of yor good prosperitye and welth.” The writing, as I have been informed, is of the period of Henry VIII; and on the slips of paper and parchment to which the inner margins of the leaves are pasted are portions of English manuscripts, which are probably of the same date. There can, however, be little doubt that the leaves have been mounted, and the volume covered, about a hundred years subsequent to the engraving of the cuts. [Illustration] I agree with Mr. Ottley in thinking that those cuts were engraved about the middle of the fifteenth century, but I can perceive nothing in them to induce me to suppose they were the work of a Dutch artist; and I am as little inclined to ascribe them to a German. The style of the drawing is not unlike what we see in illuminated French manuscripts of the middle of the fifteenth century; and as the only two engraved words which occur in the volume are French, I am rather inclined to suppose that the artist who made the drawings was a native of France. The costume of the female to whom the words are addressed appears to be French; and the action of the lover kneeling seems almost characteristic of that nation. No Dutchman certainly ever addressed his mistress with such an air. He holds what appears to be a ring as gracefully as a modern Frenchman holds a snuff-box, and upon the scroll before him are engraved a heart, and the words which he may be supposed to utter, “_Mon Ame_.” At page 109, is a fac-simile of the cut referred to, the letter K, of the size of the original, and printed in the same kind of colour. [Illustration]