16th century; but the earlier ones only have any special character in them. Of these, some are cut rudely and some timidly also, but some are fairly well cut, and few so ill that the expression of the design is not retained. The design of most of these early works is mostly admirable, and as far removed from the commonplace as possible; many, nay most of these cuts, are fine expressions of that pietism of the Middle Ages which has been somewhat veiled from us by the strangeness, and even grotesqueness which has mingled with it, but the reality of which is not doubtful to those who have studied the period without prejudice. Amongst these may be cited a design of Christ being pressed in the wine press, probably as early as the end of the 14th century, which may stand without disadvantage beside a fine work of the 13th century. The next step towards book illustration brings us to the block-books, in which the picture-cuts are accompanied by a text, also cut on wood; the folios being printed by rubbing off on one side only. The subject of the origin of the most noteworthy of these books, the "Ars Moriendi," the "Lord's Prayer," the "Song of Solomon," the "Biblia Pauperum," the "Apocalypse," and the "Speculum Humanæ Salvationis," has been debated, along with the question of the first printer by means of movable types, with more acrimony than it would seem to need. I, not being a learned person, will not add one word to the controversy; it is enough to say that these works were done somewhere between the years 1430 and 1460, and that their style was almost entirely dominant throughout the Gothic period in Flanders and Holland, while it had little influence on the German wood-cutters. For the rest, all these books have great merit as works of art; it would be difficult to find more direct or more poetical rendering of the events given than those of the "Speculum Humanæ Salvationis;" or more elegant and touching designs than those in the "Song of Solomon." The cuts of the "Biblia Pauperum" are rougher, but full of vigour and power of expression. The "Ars Moriendi" is very well drawn and executed, but the subject is not so interesting. The "Apocalypse" and "The Lord's Prayer" are both of them excellent, the former being scarcely inferior in design to the best of the Apocalypse picture MSS. of the end of the thirteenth century.