Josse Bade has some large initials in the Venetian style, with intertwisting bands and no historiation, generally described in book catalogues as ‘magnificent ornamental letters.’ We admit to a predilection for initials with personages, and prefer to give here some of the smaller set, sometimes printed in red in the original, which particularly excited Dibdin’s admiration, and which are graceful, even when not historiated. They are to be found in a great many of this printer’s productions, as well as in those of Simon de Colines and others. The missal letters of two sizes, beginning with an A representing the Trinity, are considered by experts to have been designed by Geoffroy Tory or members of his school. They form part of a fragment consisting of eight or nine pictorial pages, such as are to be met with in the missals. Several have the Crucifixion surrounded by an ornamental border, in one of which is the mark of Tory’s _atelier_--the cross of Lorraine. On these leaves, which have not been identified--they were perhaps only proof-sheets--the letters did not serve as initials, but were placed end to end, to form a compartment border. In two instances where initials were used at the beginning of the text, they came from an alphabet of one of the missals given above. The smaller of the two remaining sets, with the little D dated 1526, was used in the publications of Simon de Colines and others. A similar initial used by Chevallon at the beginning of a treatise of diseases of women by Hippocrates is dated 1524, but after 1545 the date is replaced by the letters C. G., the initials of Chevallon’s widow, Charlotte Guiard. In a large folio edition published by Chevallon in 1528 of the _Digesta seu Pandectae Juris Civilis_, most of the initials are too badly printed for reproduction. One of them, however, is of good impression, and besides that is supremely interesting, as it forms a little picture representing a scene from one of the xylographic _Ars Moriendi_. It is the only letter of the kind we know, and this is the only time we have met with it. In the original the initial is of the smaller dimension, but it is so interesting that we have had it enlarged. In the block books, scrolls are generally seen emerging from the mouths of the devils, with the suggestions printed on them by which they attempt to turn aside the dying soul from thoughts of piety. This miniature composition is too small for such insertions, but the attitude of the arch fiend shows that he is ready to seize any opportunity that may present itself.