An entire revolution, moreover, which had taken place in the formation of royal and princely libraries, was to produce a revolution in binding also. Bibles, missals, reproductions of ancient authors, treatises on theology, were no longer the only books in common use. The new language had given rise to histories, romances, and poems, which were the delight of a society becoming more and more polished every day. For the pleasure of readers, the gallant of one sex and the fair of the other, books were required more agreeable to the eye, and less rough to the touch, than those used for the edification of monks or the instruction of scholars. And first of all were substituted, for the purpose of manuscripts, sizes more portable than the grave folio. Then fine and smooth vellum was used for writing, and books were covered in velvet, silk, or woollen stuffs. Moreover, paper, a recent invention, opened up a new era for libraries; but two centuries were to elapse before pasteboard had entirely taken the place of wooden covers. It is in the inventories, in the accounts, and in the archives of kings and princes, we must look for the history of bookbinding in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Fig. 383). We shall limit ourselves to giving a description of some costly bindings, taken from the inventories of the magnificent libraries of the Dukes of Burgundy and of Orleans, now partly destroyed, and partly scattered about among the great public collections of France and other countries. [Illustration: Fig. 382.--Banner of the Corporation of Printers-Booksellers of Angers.] Belonging to the Dukes of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, Jean sans Peur, and Philip the Good, we see a small Book of the Gospels and of the “Heures de la Croix” (a kind of prayer-book), with “a binding embellished with gold and fifty-eight large pearls, in a case made of camlet, with one large pearl and a cluster of small pearls;” the romance of the “Moralité des Hommes sur le Ju (jeu) des Eschiers” (the game of chess), “covered in silk, with white and red flowers, and silver-gilt nails, on a green ground;” a Book of Orisons, “covered in red leather, with silver-gilt nails;” a Psalter, “having two silver-gilt clasps, bound in blue, with a golden eagle with two heads and red talons, to which is attached a little silver-gilt instrument for turning over the leaves, with three escutcheons of the same arms, covered with a red velvet _chemise_.”[59] [Illustration: Fig. 383.--Fragment of an engraved and stamped Binding in an unknown Material (Fifteenth Century), representing the mystical Chase of the Unicorn, which is taking refuge in the lap of the Virgin. (Public Library, Rouen.)] The _chemise_ was a sort of pocket in which certain valuable books were enveloped. The “Heures de St. Louis” (St. Louis’s Prayer-book), now in the Musée des Souverains, is still in its _chemise_ of red sandal-wood.