PLATE X., from the Missal of Ferdinand and Isabella (British Museum, Add. 1851), described at page 57 of the "Historical Manual," introduces us to the pictorial, or rather miniature style,--one, which can only be excelled in by those who are prepared to devote themselves to painting as no longer a decorative, but as essentially a "fine art." Far am I from saying that the highest possible art was not brought to bear upon much Mediæval illumination; all that I would convey is, that care and neatness may produce very respectable reproductions of ordinary ornamental work, such as was commonly used during the fourteenth, and early in the fifteenth centuries; but that they alone will be found quite inadequate to imitate successfully the highly modelled and fully shadowed foliage, landscape, architectural groups, and figure subjects, which incessantly recur in books illuminated at periods corresponding with the great Renaissance of art under the Van Eycks and Memlings of Flanders, the Durers of Germany, and the Peruginos, Pinturicchios, and Raffaelles, of Italy. PLATE XI., fully coloured from the same source as Plate X., can only be satisfactorily copied by the student, who may have learnt to shadow with the brush from either objects "in the round," or from really good copies, either by very great personal devotion and perseverance, or under an experienced master. PLATE XII. gives a careful outline of the preceding plate. M. D. W. 37, TAVISTOCK PLACE, LONDON. _April, 1861._ [Illustration] PART I. WHAT ILLUMINATING WAS. In the following pages an attempt has been made to concentrate into limited dimensions that which has generally been treated very voluminously. Few authors, who have tried both, will feel inclined to deny, that it is a much more difficult task to compress a great subject into a little book successfully, than it is to expand a little subject into a great book. Where materials of the highest interest, historically, artistically, and intellectually, abound, the danger is lest suppression and condensation may not break the links essential to bind a perspicuous narrative together. I must, therefore, on these grounds claim the indulgence of the reader, who may, I trust, be induced by the very imperfections of my story, to recur to the pages of those more copious and learned writers on the subjects, who have bestowed upon its elucidation long lives of exemplary and pertinacious industry.