The student turns with relief from this comparative monotony to Chronicles in which historical scenes are given. One of the oldest is among the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, and relates to the deposition of Richard II. It has been engraved in _Archæologia_, vol. xx., so that it is accessible wherever there is a good library. A little later French romances were similarly decorated, and we have innumerable pictures to illustrate the manners and costumes of the knights and ladies of whom we read in the stirring pages of Froissart. Illumination did not decline at once with the invention of printing. On the contrary some exquisite borders and initials are found in books printed on vellum, one very well known example being a New Testament in the Lambeth Library, which was long mistaken for a manuscript, though it is, in reality, a portion of the Great Bible supposed to have been printed at Mentz before 1455, and to be the earliest work of the press of Fust and Schoyffer. A few wealthy people had Prayer-books illuminated for their own use down to a comparatively recent period. The celebrated Jarry wrote exquisite little volumes for Louis XIV. and his courtiers. A very fine Book of Hours was in the Bragge Collection, and must have been written in the sixteenth century, perhaps for some widow of rank in France. It contained sixteen miniatures which closely resembled Limoges enamels, the only decided color used being the carnation for the faces, the rest of the design being in black, white, gold, and a peculiar pearly grey. Each page had a border of black and gold. From another manuscript, a Book of Hours written in France in the fourteenth century (and exhibited at the Burlington Club by Mr. Robert Young), we have some outline tracings of the ivy pattern (see page 12). The famous illuminations of Giulio Clovio (a native of Croatia, who practised in Italy 1498-1578) hardly deserve the admiration they receive. They are in fact small pictures, the colors very crude and bright, and without the solemnity which attaches to ancient religious art. An illuminated work by Clovio was recently sold in London for the enormous sum of £2050. It had been long in the possession of an old Lancashire family, and is believed to have been illuminated for Cardinal Alexander Farnese, and by him presented to his uncle Paul III., who was pope between 1534 and 1550. In England the latest illuminators became the first miniature painters; and the succession of English artists is carried on from Godemann and Paris, through Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619) and Isaac Oliver (1556-1617), to the school of Cooper (1609-1672) and Dobson, whose portraits are on vellum. [Illustration: CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL, BY GIULIO CLOVIO. From "St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans," in the Soane Museum.]