an ornamental curtain-rod, and little buds or drops of burnished gold fall here and there within the line of sight, but there is no attempt to fill up the spaces with any elaborate scheme of twining branches and real leaves and flowers, as in the French parallels. The writing is usually square and gothic, but with few of the oblique angles and little projecting points that are seen in Western gothic. The Lombardic hand of Eastern and Southern Italy, had left no trace in the script which succeeded it. The round and beautiful Carolingian letter of North Italy had a distinct influence in moulding the Italian gothic, and preserving its freedom from Teutonic angularities. It had lasted longer here than in other countries, but Spanish Visigothic was also a late lingerer, and did not succumb to French influence till the thirteenth century. In Germany, the fourteenth century proceeded as elsewhere to produce a closely packed difficult Gothic letter, and also to introduce an ugly cursive which came generally into use in the next century. In decoration, the old {72}Germanic style had given way to the influence of French and Italian work, and a sort of new school was created, which in the following century became distinctively German. The cursive writing alluded to was an ugly rapid script deformed from the minuscule, which was very largely used in the fifteenth century, and developed in time the handwriting which still prevails in Germany, although gradually giving way to the Roman. _English Work in the Fourteenth Century_ The cursive hand in England, as used between 1250 and 1550 for all purposes, and in legal documents for a long time afterwards, seems to have grown up in the early part of the thirteenth century. It is quite unlike the earlier charter hand, although it must have been derived from it. For the first century or more of its use, it is remarkable by reason of the long strokes which are broad and heavy above, but taper into thin lines below, those heavy heads being bifurcated in the earlier times and looped in the later. During the thirteenth and a great part of the fourteenth century it looked handsome, and could be read without difficulty; from the late part of the fourteenth century onwards it deteriorated both in aspect and in clearness. Nothing resembling this English hand was used on the continent, except (in a slight degree) in the notes written sometimes on the margins of philosophical and legal books, by means of a hard leaden stylus. Another cursive was also employed, which was merely the rapid writing of the gothic minuscule, like that of Germany; but this appeared rather on the continent.