border, angles, and side-pieces are inlaid in white vellum, and richly stamped in gold. The actual centre of the boards has the royal coat-of-arms of England, with crown and Garter stamped in gold, enclosed in a vellum oval of strap-work and arabesques, with the letters E. R. at the sides. The inner parallelogram has large corners stamped in gold, and is edged with a black fillet, the entire field on the calf being decorated with a semée of triple dots. The book has two gilded clasps, and the edges of the leaves are gilt, gauffred, and painted. A small panel on each of the angle-pieces, which are otherwise ornamented with designs of military trophies, drums, trumpets, shields, swords, and cuirasses, bears the initials "J. D. P." These letters are supposed to mean John Day, Printer. John Day printed books at Lambeth for Archbishop Parker; and these corner-pieces do occur on books printed by him and bound in a very similar way to the volume now described, so there is some show of probability in the interpretation. A field covered with a succession of impressions from the same stamp has no name in English, but in France it is known as a "semée," its use having come into fashion in that country a little earlier than the date of this book. [Illustration: FIG. 13.--_Gospels in Anglo-Saxon and English. London, 1571. Queen Elizabeth._] A smaller example, with centre-piece and angle inlays only, in all other ways exactly resembling the book just described, was printed in London, 1571 (Fig. 13). It is a copy of the Gospels printed by John Day, and is the dedication copy, as is stated in a MS. note on the title-page--"Presented to the Queen's own hands by Mr. Fox." A copy, printed in London in 1575, of Grant's _Græcæ Linguæ Spicilegium_ is covered in brown calf, and was bound for the queen. It has large corners stamped in gold from set stamps. In the centre it bears a fine stamp of the royal coat-of-arms, crowned, and surrounded by the Garter, and decorated with Elizabethan scrolls. The remainder of the groundwork is covered with a semée of small roses. Among the old royal manuscripts is a curious book, _Scholarum Etonensis ovatio de adventu Reginæ Elizabethæ_, 1563, covered in white vellum and stamped in gold. It bears in the centre the royal coat-of-arms enclosed in an oval ornamented border, and has large corner-pieces impressed from a set stamp, the field having a semée of small stars. The work upon this binding is of a curiously unfinished character, and it is probably the work of some unskilled local workman. The gilt edges are gauffred in a floral design, with some white colour here and there.