We indulge in no such dreams. If we are to have illuminated books, our own age must invent them. The illuminators of the Bibles, Romances, Mirrors, and Chronicles of the fourteenth century no doubt did their best, and we honour and praise them for it. We think their work among the loveliest gratifications of the eye that can be imagined. But the eye is very catholic--it has immense capacities for enjoyment. The window of the soul opens on illimitable prospects, and if the soul be satisfied for the time, it is not necessarily repleted for ever. Golden ages are cyclical, and it may be that the glory of the books of the future shall surpass all the glories of the past. By 1350 France had absorbed all the antecedent varieties of illumination. From France, therefore, spring all the succeeding styles now considered national. And as is most natural, these styles develop by proximity--the nearest to French being Netherlandish. The next, as a result of immediate intercourse, Italian. Then German, Spanish, and the rest, as intercourse gave opportunity. It is not always an easy matter to say offhand whether a MS. is French or Flemish. In the earlier days it is not easy to say whether it be French or English, or even whether French or Italian. But the distinctness comes later on. In the fifteenth century the Italian, German, French, and English are quite distinct varieties. Towards the sixteenth the Netherlandish is quite as distinct. But the styles of Spain, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, though possessing features which identify them to an experienced eye, are to the ordinary spectator merely sub-varieties of Netherlandish, Italian, or German.