the modes of writing and ornamentation between English and French work in the thirteenth century. In Central and South-eastern France the style varied somewhat as will be seen by comparing the examples given on plates 8 and 9. There is no school of art more interesting than the Anglo-Norman, as it is called, of that time. The illuminated border had not yet established itself, but the initials, drawn upon a ground of burnished gold or of diapered tints, enclose painted miniatures looking like very fine pen-and-ink designs carefully coloured. Bibles thus decorated are very {63}numerous. As they approach the end of the century, they exhibit now and then long straight lines, ending in curves or fleurons, which spread from the pictured initial upwards and downwards, and form a simple border to more than half the page. This incipient practice increased gradually from the beginning of the following century onwards. The fleurons became gold ivy-leaves, and similar leaves were figured as sprouting out from the long straight border-lines, these lines being extended so as to enclose the page on all sides. Still the effect was stiff and imperfect, but by the close of the fourteenth century, a very splendid kind of foliated border was used by French illuminators. The gold leaves called ivy-leaves were now introduced in greater number and made to sprout, no longer from the straight border frame itself, but more naturally out of branches which festooned from the frame. The ivy-leaf border in this state was very much favoured in French illumination, but was little used elsewhere. It generally accompanies pictorial illustration of superior merit, and gives an air of distinction and elegance to any MS. in which it is found. The French schools of Central France and of Paris had by the middle of the fourteenth century regained their lost pre-eminence in art. The thirteenth century was the first and the finest period of mediæval "gothic," so far as handwriting is concerned. (The name is a misnomer, but has a clear recognised sense, and is useful.) The letters are angulated at their extremities, but the bodies are still rounded and perfectly clear. The square and lapidar Gothic was introduced in the fourteenth century, and prevailed during that and the two succeeding centuries. It was a vicious script, indistinct and difficult to read; and although some examples, distinct, legible, and handsome, were brought out in the fifteenth century, the system was generally bad, and there is no reason to regret its extinction, which took place in France, Italy, and Spain about the middle of the sixteenth {64}century, and in England somewhat later, although it is lingering on even now in Germany and Denmark.