The square Gothic of the fourteenth century, however unclear and objectionable as a script, was not ill adapted to ornamental purposes, as the vast number of prayerbooks for the laity produced between 1350 and 1400, and throughout the succeeding century, make manifest. Of those prayerbooks, which for a hundred and fifty years were the chief medium for displaying the skill of the mediæval illuminator, the number of copies which were made for individuals or families, as birth-day or wedding gifts, or for whatever reason, was incredibly large. The existence of such prayerbooks, well written and decorated with paintings, for private persons, is enough in itself to show that the office of calligrapher and miniaturist was a secular trade, and that the "old monks," to whom so many persons ascribe the writing of the "missals," had long ceased to be the sole producers of MSS. Not many of the earlier Books of Hours have survived, that is, of those which were written between 1300 and 1350; but from the latter date onwards to 1400 they are not uncommon, and from 1400 onwards very numerous. This statement refers to French and Franco-Flemish and Burgundian work. Of English work, there are very few extant anterior to 1400, and the same may be said of Dutch examples. As for those written in Italy and Germany, it is only towards the close of the fifteenth century that they are met with. The English and French Hours produced during 1350-1420 are very different in their mode of ornamentation. The Gothic writing was pretty nearly the same everywhere, and the larger illuminated initials had followed one model since the thirteenth century. These initials (when not historiated with little miniatures) were painted in colour upon a ground usually of gold. The space within the letter-forms was filled up with a conventional flower-pattern, having buds of red and blue tints. At the earlier {65}period the letter-form has a small extension upwards and downwards, in a simple style resembling wood-carving. In the fourteenth century this extension is increased, and the long straight border, with ivy-leaves here and there, was produced. While that kind of border was in France being developed into its most elegant phase, a different type was preferred in England. The gold ground of the initial is prolonged into a stem, around which twines a corresponding prolongation of coloured foliage springing from the curved extremities of the initial letter. Thus they form a border which would be pretty enough in itself, but which is further decorated with tufts of long feathery grass, tipped with buds, which grow out of the stem and sweep in graceful curves outside the line of foliage. This feathery ornament--which, except for the little fleurons in colour here and there, seems drawn with a fine pen in brown ink--is distinctly English, and was retained till late in the fifteenth century, side by side with newer methods borrowed from France. The red and blue, with white lights, which