To dwell upon Spanish illuminated manuscripts would be comparatively profitless to the practical student; for all the peculiarities and excellencies they would appear to have at any time possessed, may be found more perfectly developed at first in French, subsequently in Netherlandish, and ultimately in Italian volumes.[73] In one most remarkable and indeed historical volume, the actual alliance of Spanish writing and initial illumination with Flemish subject-painting and Arabesque is clearly to be recognized. The result of the union is certainly most happy, for few more beautiful books exist than the exquisite missal which in a passage of golden letters and honied words Francesco de Roias offers to Isabella "the Catholic." This magnificent volume, from which our plates (Technical Manual) Nos. 10, 11, and 12, have been taken, was purchased by the authorities of the British Museum, in whose catalogue it figures as add. 18,851, of Messrs. W. and T. Boone in 1852. In this work the brush triumphs over the pen, its decorations are essentially pictorial, and many of them recall, if not the hand, at least the style, of Memling and Van Eyck. Unlike volumes of earlier periods in which the illustrations are generally the work of one hand throughout, in this elaborate volume, a division of labour obtains. In this, as in many others of about the same period, not only are the penman and the painter two individuals, but the latter especially becomes half a dozen. This was, no doubt to a great extent, occasioned by the almost universal substitution of lay for clerical illuminators in the latter part of the 15th century, and by the production at that date of illuminated books for dealers adopting the principles and practice of that system of economic production which ultimately permitted manufacture to almost universally supersede Art throughout Europe. It remains now only to sketch, with a brevity altogether out of proportion to the great interest of the subject, the progress of the art in Italy. If the delineation of naïve and graceful romantic incident, combined with elegant foliated ornament, reached perfection in the illuminations of the French school; if blazoning on gilded grounds was carried to its most gorgeous pitch in Oriental and Byzantine manuscripts; if intricate interlacements and minute elaboration may be regarded as the special characteristics of Hiberno-Saxon scribes; and if a noble tone of solid colour, combined with great humour and intense energy of expression, marked England's best productions,--it may be safely asserted, that it was reserved for the Italians to introduce into the embellishment of manuscripts those higher qualities of art, their peculiar aptitude for which so long gave them a pre-eminence among contemporaneous schools.