To rapidly multiply copies of these text-books of the Church of Rome, was, no doubt, one of the first and most important duties of the monks of Canterbury; and from the traces we may detect in various manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon mode of writing and ornamenting writing, combined with paintings such as the Anglo-Saxons were incompetent to execute for some time after the close of the 6th century, we may safely infer that the monks both worked themselves and largely employed the native scribes. Thus, as Mr. Westwood observes in a recent article in the "Archæological Journal," "We have sufficient evidence that, soon after the settlement of the followers of St. Augustine, there must have been established a _scriptorium_, where some of the most beautiful manuscripts were written in the purest uncial or rustic capitals, but decorated with initials in the Anglo-Saxon or Irish style. Of such MSS. we can now record-- "1. The purple Gospels at Stockholm, written in very large uncials, but with illuminated title-pages, with pure Anglo-Saxon ornaments, and grand figures of the Evangelists in a mixed classical and Anglo-Saxon style. "2. The Utrecht Gospels. "3. The Gospels in the Cathedral Library, Durham; Astle's 'Origin and Progress of Writing,' pl. 14, fig. B, p. 83. "4. The Utrecht Psalter. "5. The so-called Psalter of St. Augustine, MSS. Cotton., Vespasian, A 1; Astle, pl. 9, fig. 2. "6. The Bodleian MS. of the Rule of St. Benedict, Lord Hatton's MSS., No. 93; Astle, pl. 9, fig. 1, p. 82. "Were it not for the initials, and other illuminations in the genuine Anglo-Saxon style, not one of these MSS. could be supposed to have been executed in England. They are, nevertheless, among the finest specimens of early caligraphic art in existence." One of the most important of this interesting class of manuscripts is, unquestionably, that of the Psalms, now preserved in the public library at Utrecht. It was formerly in the possession of Sir Robert Cotton, and should be now with the rest of his library in the British Museum. The volume contains, besides the Psalms, the "Pusillus eram," the Credo, and the Canticles, with a few leaves from the Gospel of St. Matthew. It is written upon vellum, and each psalm has a pen-and-ink illustration, in the same style as those in the Harleian Psalter, No. 603, which was written in the 10th century; and similar also to those in the Cambridge Psalter of the 12th century. The writing in the Utrecht Psalter is executed in Roman rustic capitals; it is arranged in three columns in each page; and the elegance with which the letters are formed, would place the manuscripts amongst those of the 6th or 7th century: but the illustrations before mentioned, with the large uncial B, heightened with gold, in the Saxon interlaced style, which commences the first psalm, would give it a later date, certainly not earlier than the 7th or 8th century; and the pen-and-ink drawings were probably executed a century later.