[Illustration: PLATE IV.--FACSIMILE OF MANUSCRIPT IN LAMBETH PALACE LIBRARY, 15TH CENTURY.] [Illustration: PAGES FROM A BOOK OF HOURS OF FOURTEENTH CENTURY.] DESCRIPTION OF PLATE V. Plate V. shows three ornaments from manuscripts of late date, all in the National Collections. The border with the raspberries is from a Missal of the sixteenth century in the British Museum (Addl. 18,855), and was probably written and illuminated in the Low Countries. We have already mentioned the extraordinary freedom and ease of the Flemish work of that period. Every beautiful object was made use of for pictorial effect. Children, birds, jewels, shells, as well as fruit and flowers, are to be found. They particularly excelled in painting pearls. One border is green, with chains and ropes of pearls strewn all over it. The calendar represents domestic scenes, each strongly surrounded with a double gold line, the written part being simply left out in the middle, so that the scene forms its border. The gold ground presents a slightly different appearance from that shown in our engraving, as it is flat, being painted with shell-gold not put on very thickly. The shadows are of Burnt Umber, which has a very transparent effect on the gold ground. Beside this border is a fine letter of somewhat earlier date from a chorale book, German work in all probability, which, with many others, Italian and Flemish as well as German, were ruthlessly cut up into fragments, perhaps at the Reformation, perhaps more recently, and are now in the Art Library of the South Kensington Museum. They are much rubbed and faded, and our chromo-lithograph represents this initial C as it appeared when first finished. In much of the northern work of this period--about the middle of the fifteenth century, say 1450--there is a beautiful style of ornamental scroll-work, which some have proposed to call the "Leather Pattern." It may represent the cut leather work of the mantling of a knight's tilting helmet. A small specimen of it is shown in the turned-back petals of the flowers in this letter, but whole volumes are to be seen entirely decorated with it, and some of the best work of the period was accomplished in it.