Among the most magnificent of the Anglo-Norman manuscripts of the thirteenth century are copies of the _Psalter_. One in the library of the Society of Antiquaries in Burlington House is of extraordinary beauty for the delicate and complicated patterns of interlaced scroll-work which fill its large initials. The first letter _B_ of the beginning of the Psalms (_Beatus vir_ etc.) is in this and some other illuminated _Psalters_ of the same class, of such size and elaboration that it occupies most of the first page. Among its ingeniously devised interlaced ornaments various little animals, rabbits, squirrels and others are playing--marvels of minute and delicate painting. Round the border which frames the whole are ten minute medallion pictures, some of them representing musicians playing on various instruments, one of which is a kind of barrel organ, called an _organistrum_, worked by two players. This magnificent manuscript dates from about the middle of the thirteenth century. _The Tenison Psalter._ Another still more beautiful _Psalter_ in the British Museum, called from its former owner _Archbishop Tenison's Psalter_, was illuminated for Queen Eleanor of Castile, the wife of Edward I., about the year 1284. It was intended as a marriage gift for their third son Alphonso, who, however, died in August 1284, a few days after the signing of his marriage contract. The manuscript was for this reason unfortunately left unfinished, and was afterwards completed by a very inferior illuminator. The letter _B_ on the first page is filled by an exquisite miniature of the Royal Psalmist; and in the lower part of the border is the slaying by an infantile David, of Goliath, represented as a gigantic knight in chain armour. At intervals round the border are minute but very accurately painted birds of various kinds, including the gull, kingfisher, woodpecker, linnet, crane and goldfinch. In places where the text does not reach to the end of the line the space is filled up by a narrow band of ornament in gold and colours, occupying the same space that a complete line of words would have done. This method of avoiding any blank spaces in the page, and making the whole surface one unbroken mass of beauty was employed in the finest manuscripts of this and of other classes, especially the manuscripts of France and Flanders. _Tenison Psalter._ The _Tenison Psalter_ appears to have been written and illuminated in the Monastic House of the Blackfriars in London; it is quite one of the noblest existing examples of English art during the thirteenth century, and is unsurpassed in beauty and skilful technique by the manuscripts of any age or country[113]. _MSS. of the Apocalypse._ _Manuscripts of the Apocalypse._ The Anglo-Norman and French manuscripts of the _Apocalypse_, executed during the fourteenth century, are on the whole the most beautiful class of illuminated manuscripts that the world has ever produced[114].