It is perhaps as well, even though the statement has been made over and over again, to emphasize the fact that the actual word miniature has nothing whatever to do with the size of the portrait. We accept it, however, as implying that the portrait is of portable size, and we shall apply it to such a portrait as can lie in the palm of one's hand, ignoring the fact that the word was originally derived from "minium" or red lead, and has come down to us from the little portraits on illuminated manuscripts, outlined or bordered with lines of red. In two countries especially, the art of painting miniatures has flourished, England and France, and in these two countries there have been schools of miniature painters, and a succession of great exponents of the art, while in the other countries of Europe there have only been now and again painters who have devoted especial attention to this branch of their art, and have taken high position in it. It is more especially an English art, because, although for exquisite grace, charming colouring, and dainty conception, the works of the French miniature painters take a high rank, even they must yield the palm for representation of character to the greatest English painter of miniatures, Samuel Cooper. Moreover, in no country but England has there been such a long series of painters in miniature, extending from the sixteenth-century down to comparatively recent times. It has been the fashion to commence a survey of English miniature painters by reference to Holbein, and it is not altogether an unsatisfactory manner in which to start (although Holbein was not an Englishman), because so many of his best works were painted in this country. It must not, however, be forgotten that portrait painting was practised by native English artists in the early part, or at least in the middle, of the fifteenth-century, and although we know very little indeed about these English painters, yet we have many works remaining which must be attributed to them. It may, moreover, be stated generally that the predecessors and contemporaries of Holbein in miniature work were mostly of foreign extraction, although working in England; such, for example, as Lavina Terlinck and Gwillym Stretes. We know, however, that certain fourteenth-century manuscripts were actually executed in England, by an English artist, and as an example of such work, Mr. Lionel Cust, in his preface to the English Portraiture Exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, points out the Salisbury Lectionarium, with the portrait of Lord Lovell as its frontispiece, representing him receiving the book from its maker, John Siferwas. He refers also to the even better known portrait of Chaucer, painted by Occlive on the manuscript now in the British Museum.