The lozenge really looks very well on a book-plate; and lends itself readily to the decoration usually bestowed upon it. Take, for instance, that of Dame Anne Margaretta Mason, dated in 1701. Her maiden name was Long, and the shield shows us Mason impaling Long. Lady Mason's is a fair sample of a lady's book-plate of that date. The arms are contained in a lozenge, set in a Jacobean frame, which is lined with scale work, and adorned with ribbons and leafy sprays. There is no motto-scroll, but the name bracket comes up close to the base of the design (see also p. 52). Indeed it may be said that the Jacobean style of ornamentation is that best suited to ladies' book-plates, especially when the arms are depicted on a lozenge-shaped shield. The book-plate of the 'Hon. Anne North,' by Simon Gribelin, is another instance to prove this. I do not think that Chippendale decoration suits them at all, and, in the use of ornaments of that style, Englishwomen were as immoderate as Englishmen. Lady Lombe's book-plate, designed in the later days of Chippendalism, is quite appalling from its over-ornamentation. The wreath of ribbon, or festoon, style of the close of the last century is more suitable for ladies' book-plates, and some very charming examples are known; equally suitable, it seems to me, would have been the picture or landscape style--the style in which, at the close of the last century, Bewick, and some few other English artists, were working with conspicuous success, and it seems strange that the ladies of Great Britain did not adopt it more extensively. When we come to modern times we find ladies have run as wild as their lords over book-plates; there is the same peculiarity, the same mysticism, the same inappropriateness for book-plates in the designs of many book-plates of _fin de siècle_ English ladies. The few really artistic and appropriate book-plates stand out in marked contrast in Miss Labouchere's excellent little book, and amongst them may be noted Lady Mayo's, designed in 1894 by Mr. Anning Bell, which shows us a musician and a songstress within a frame composed of spring flowers and the national emblem of Ireland. But let us go back a little in date, and look at a ladies' book-plate designed in the Allegoric style; what more striking example could be found than that furnished by George Vertue's charming piece of work engraved for Lady Oxford? [Illustration]