In the chapter about Basle, mention has been made of an alphabet which is nearly complete, used by Furter in his _Liber Decretorum sive Panormia_, and which also occurs in a much rarer book without date or printer’s name, the _Decreta Consilii Basiliensis_. This alphabet, it now seems, was used in 1488, at Besançon, in the _Speculum Humanae Vitae_ of Rodoricus Zamorensis. Sotheby, in his _Typography of the Fifteenth Century_, has given a reproduction of one of the pages on which there is the very characteristic serpentine S, which is here given with the T and the V. Printers in the other towns would seem to have been supplied with the worn-out initials of the Rouen and Lyons presses. In the few books with ornaments printed at Caen, Rouen letters are found; whilst in those published in the south of France, there are chiefly the floral initials from the presses of Saccon, De Vingle, and other Lyons printers. CHAPTER XIII SPANISH TOWNS ‘Spanish books,’ says Mr. Pollard, ‘are distinguished by the excellence of their initial letters, which are always as plentiful as they are good, the great majority of books after 1485 being fully provided with them.’ Our own experience confirms this statement, but we have found that they are as a rule ornamental rather than historiated, and that there is, moreover, a certain sameness about them. For this reason we shall only give six specimens of the first variety, but these will serve to give an idea of the initials of this kind usually met with in Spanish books. The C and the M are taken from a volume printed by G. Castilla at Valencia, the E from a _Comento di Eusebio_, printed in 1522 by order of the Reverend Archbishop of Toledo, at the noble town of Salamanca, by Hans Gyffer Aleman di Silgenstat. The origin of the three others, L, P, U, is uncertain, but is referred to further on. The seven smaller initials, or ‘lettrines,’ as they are called, are taken from the Eusebius. Our historiated specimens are much more numerous. The first set of nine letters is taken from a work of the very greatest rarity, to which Mr. Pollard has called attention, the _Compilacion de Leyes_, printed at Zamora in 1485. This consists of eight different sections and a preface, each of which is preceded by one of the initials.