The third of these ornaments is also from the collection in the South Kensington Museum. In this design the thing to be most noticed is perhaps that which is least prominent, namely, the gold spots, with black filaments, as it were, floating from them. They serve to eke out and fill up the composition, and in some books are used with fine effect on almost every page. They should be thickly gilt on a raised surface, and should have dark outlines, and the filaments rapidly and lightly drawn, either with a pen or with a very fine brush, pruned down almost to a single hair. Many other pretty effects may be obtained by early training the hand and eye to draw single lines in this way. The letters in one of our other Plates (No. I.) are entirely filled with tracery of the kind, and the patterns principally in use are easily learned. Anything free is preferable to servile imitation and tracing, and these diapers in particular lose more than almost anything else in the whole art of illumination by direct copying. The student should learn to adapt his delicate lines--chiefly in red and blue--to any form of letter, and while drawing them should not let his hand falter or hesitate for a moment. It is the same with the lace-like patterns in white which were so much in vogue for heightening the edges of letters in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They are very necessary to the effect, but must be painted in with a light touch and great rapidity, or they lose all spirit. The initial P on the previous page, and also the initials in pages vii. and 1, have been taken from MSS. illuminated with the "English flower-pattern." An attempt has been made to represent the colors employed by means of lines. This system was first applied to heraldry in the first half of the seventeenth century. Horizontal lines represent blue; vertical, red; cross hatching, black; dotting, gold or yellow. Green is denoted by lines "in bend dexter," and purple by lines "in bend sinister." The bands and borders on the back of Plate V. are of the fourteenth century, but similar ornaments were common at all times. They are chiefly red or blue, with patterns in white lines and dots, and in highly burnished gold. They are employed both as borders and to fill up incomplete lines of writing. [Illustration: PLATE V.--ORNAMENTS AND LARGE INITIAL, 15TH AND 16TH CENTURIES.] [Illustration: BANDS AND BORDER ORNAMENTS--FOURTEENTH CENTURY.] DESCRIPTION OF PLATE VI.