From Ezekiel’s niche issues the scroll, Ez. xliv. 2, “~Porta hæc clausa erit, et non aperietur;~” and from Jeremiah’s, xxxi. 22, “~Creavit dominus novum super terram, femina circumdabit virum.~” It requires no argument to prove the emblematical nature of the _middle_ compartment of this page from the _Biblia Pauperum;_ and the texts on scrolls are but the accessories to the devices, and serve only the more clearly to mark this Block-book as an Emblem-book. _Plate 7_ [Illustration: _S. John the Evangelist. 1st edition Block Book from the Corser Collection._] _Plate 8_ [Illustration: _A Page of the Apocalypse from Block Book in the Corser Collection._] Passing by similar Block-books, as _The Book of Canticles_, and _The Apocalypse of St. John_, we will conclude the subject with a notice of Humphreys’ pl. 5, following p. 42 of his text; it is “A Subject from the Block-book entitled ‘Ars memorandi,’ executed probably at the beginning of the fifteenth century.” “The entire work,” we are informed, p. 42, “consists of the symbols of the four evangelists, each occupying a page, and being most grotesquely treated, the bull of St. Luke and the lion of St. Mark standing upright on their hind legs. These symbols are surrounded with various objects, calculated to recall the leading events in their respective Gospels.” But the whole passage in explanation of the Plate is so much to our purpose, that we ask pardon of the author for inserting it entire. He says:— “The page I have selected for reproduction is the fourth ‘image or symbol’ of St. Matthew—the Angel. The objects grouped around are many of them very curious, and, without the assistance of the accompanying explanations, would certainly not serve to aid the memory of the modern Biblical students. The symbolic Angel holds in the left hand objects numbered 18, which by the explanation we learn to be the sun and moon, accompanied by an unusual arrangement of stars and planets; intended to recall the passage, ‘there were signs in the sun and moon’—_erant signa in sole et luna_. I give the text of monkish explanation in MS. No. 19, the clasped hands, represents marriage, in reference to the generations of the Ancestors of Christ as enumerated by St. Matthew. No. 20, the cockle shell and the bunch of grapes are emblems of travelling and pilgrimage, and appear to represent the flight into Egypt; 21, the head of an ass, is intended to recall the entrance of Christ into Jerusalem riding on an ass; 22, a table, with bread-knife and drinking cup, recalls the Last Supper (_Cæna magna_); and the accompanying symbol, without a number, represents the census rendered to Cæsar.”[39]