It is, however, in the quality, rather than the quantity, of Carlovingian MSS. that the reader is most likely to be interested; and I therefore hasten to note two or three of the most imposing specimens. The earliest of the grand class is believed to be the Evangelistiarium, long preserved in the Abbey of St. Servin, at Toulouse, and ultimately presented to Napoleon I., on the baptism of the King of Rome, in the name of the city. From contemporary entries, it appears to have been completed, after eight years' labour, in the year 781, by the scribe Godescalc. Of whatever nation "Godescalc" may have been, the volume[49] exhibits far too many composite features to justify the belief that any one individual, or even many individuals of one nation, could have executed the whole. The paintings are probably by an Italian hand, being executed freely with the brush, in opaque colours, in the antique manner. Many of the golden borders are quite Greek in style, while the initial letters, and others of the borders, are thoroughly Hiberno-Saxon. A nearly similar dissection would apply to most of the manuscripts executed for Charlemagne's descendants, to the third generation. The volume contains 127 leaves, every leaf, not entirely filled with illumination, being stained purple, with a white margin, and covered with a text, written in golden initials, in two columns, separated by very graceful and delicately-executed borders. Our plates, Technical Manual, Nos. 1 and 2, taken from the great Charlemagne Bible of the British Museum, give a good idea of the nature of the ornament usually employed in similar MSS. to fill up such borders and to form and decorate initial letters. They will serve to show also the common type of the Alphabets in use. From Charlemagne's "Scriptorium," which was no doubt the head-quarters of the best artists of all nations in his time, proceeded many other volumes of scarcely less interest and magnificence. Among these, the most noteworthy are, the Gospels of St. Medard de Soissons,[50] so called because believed to have been presented by Charlemagne to that Abbey;[51] the Vienna Psalter, written for Pope Hadrian; the Gospels preserved in the library of the Arsenal at Paris, and formerly belonging to the Abbaye of St. Martin des Champs;[52] the Gospels found upon the knees of the Emperor on opening his tomb at Aix-la-Chapelle; the Harleian MS. No. 3788, known as the "Codex Aureus";[53] and last, not least, the Bible, known as that of San Calisto, preserved in the Benedictine monastery of that saint at Rome, and formerly in the monastery of San Paolo fuori le Mura. The frontispiece to this volume, which is no less than one foot four inches high, by one foot one inch wide, represents a sitting emperor holding a globe, on which are inscribed various letters, arranged in the peculiar form adopted by Charlemagne in his signs manual.