Tablets like this with as many as eight ivory leaves are rare, but a very large number of beautiful ivory diptychs still exist, with carved reliefs on the outside of very graceful style and delicate execution. Most of these diptychs date from the fourteenth century, and are of French workmanship, but they were also produced in England at the same time and of quite equal merit in design and execution. _Inscribed lead tablet._ _Manuscripts on lead plates_, like those of the ancient Greeks, were occasionally used in mediaeval times. A single lead leaf of an Anglo-Saxon manuscript from Lord Londesborough's collection is illustrated in _Archaeologia_, Vol. XXXIV, Plate 36, page 438. This leaf measures 6½ inches by 5 inches in width. On it is incised with a stilus in fine bold semi-uncial writing the beginning of Aelfric's preface to his first collection of _Homilies_, which in modern English runs thus:--"I, Aelfric, monk and mass-priest, was sent in King Aethelred's time from Aelfeage the Bishop, the successor of Aethelwold, to a certain minster which is called Cernel, &c." At the top of the page there is a heading in large Runic characters. Aelfric was sent by Aelfeage Bishop of Winchester to be Abbot of Cerne in 988 or 989, and this interesting page appears to be of contemporary date. It was found by a labourer while digging in the precincts of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. Along one edge of the leaden page there are three holes to receive the loops which hinged the plates together, but the other leaves were not found. _Horn-books._ _Horn-books._ One form of wooden tablet continued in use, especially in boys' schools, till the sixteenth century. This was a wooden board, rather smaller than an ordinary school-boy's slate, with a long handle at the bottom; on it was fixed a sheet of vellum or paper on which was written or (in the latest examples) printed _the Alphabet_, _the Creed_, _the Lord's Prayer_ or such like. Over this a thin sheet of transparent horn was nailed, whence these tablets were often called "horn-books." A good example dating from the sixteenth century is now preserved in the Bodleian library at Oxford. CHAPTER II. CLASSICAL MANUSCRIPTS WRITTEN WITH PEN AND INK. To return now to classical forms of manuscripts, it appears to have been a long time before the _book_ or _codex_ form of manuscript was extended from the wood and ivory tablets to writings on parchment or paper. _The roll form of MS._ _The codex form._