[Illustration: Fig. 350.--Border, taken from a Book of the Gospels of the Eighth Century. (Library of Vienna).] If we would have an idea of the heaviness and the ungraceful character of the writing and of the ornaments which accompanied it before the period of Charlemagne, it will suffice to examine Fig. 349. “It was then quite time,” says M. Aimé Champollion-Figeac, “that the salutary influence exercised by the illustrious monarch made itself felt in the Arts as well as in letters.” The first manuscripts which seem to bear witness to this progress are first a sacramentary, said to be that of Gellonius, the allegorical paintings of which are of great interest in the history of Christian symbolism; and a Book of the Gospels, now in the Louvre: the latter is said to have belonged to the great emperor himself, and we reproduce one of the paintings from it (Fig. 351). We may mention, as of the ninth century, many Books of the Gospels, in one of which, given by Louis le Débonnaire to the Abbey St. Médard de Soissons, the purest Byzantine style shows itself; then the Bible called the “Metz” Bible, in which are paintings of large dimensions, remarkable for the felicitous groupings of the figures and for the beauty of the draperies. One of these miniatures excites an interest quite peculiar, inasmuch as King David, who is represented in it, is but a copy of an ancient Apollo, round whom the artist has personified Courage, Justice, Prudence, &c. Let us mention still further two Bibles and a book of prayers, the last containing a very fine portrait of the king, Charles the Bald, to whom it belonged; and lastly, two books really worth attention, on account of the delicacy and freedom of the outline drawings, for the attitudes of the characters represented, and for the draperies, which resemble those of ancient statues. These books are a “Terence,” preserved in the Imperial Library, Paris, number 7,899 in the catalogue; and a “Lectionary of the Cathedal of Metz,” from which the [Illustration: Fig. 351.--Miniature from the Book of the Gospels of Charlemagne. (Manuscript in the Library of the Louvre.)] border (Fig. 352) is taken. While in France the art of painting manuscripts had progressed so much as to produce some perfect models of delicacy and taste, Germany had never got beyond the simplest compositions, as we see in the “Paraphrase on the Gospels,” in Theotisc (the old Teutonic language), belonging to the Library of Vienna. [Illustration: Fig. 352.--Border of a Lectionary in the Cathedral of Metz. (Ninth Century.)]