finished it; that a writing, when set aside to dry, should be covered with a cloth to protect it from dust; and that to turn a writing downward is shameful. It was the emphatic injunction that scrupulous care must be taken in writing the Names of God: before writing every name of the Deity, the scribe must say, "I intend to write the Holy Name"; otherwise the roll would be unfit.[20] Scarcely less of concern was displayed by the early Christians in copying their sacred books and even the classic literature. In certain periods of the Middle Ages the value and sanctity attributed to the transcription of a book is set forth in the fact that in many abbeys every 'novice' "was expected to bring on the day of his profession as a 'religious' a volume of considerable size which he had carefully copied by his own hands," somewhat as a "thesis" is a requirement for graduation by some modern institutions of learning. This deep concern which a copyist felt for his work--for he had a solicitude that his copy might endure both time and use and long remain as a monument to himself--lent an artistic taste and, often, a religious devotion to the creditable transcription of a book, especially to the copying of the Bible or a part of the Bible. This devotion and concern (often witnessed unto in annotations in the margin or at the close of the transcribed portion of the Bible) made a copyist scrupulously honest and painstaking in his task, and was often disclosed in beautiful ornamentation and artistic embellishments. As a "royal" example, the _Codex Rossanensis_, a manuscript containing the gospels of Matthew and Mark, made, possibly, in the sixth century, though discovered in Calabria only in 1879, is written in silver characters on purple-colored vellum and has twelve miniatures of great interest in the history of Byzantine art. Another manuscript of the gospels (_Codex "N"_), the leaves of which are scattered in London, Rome, Vienna, Petrograd, and its native home (Patmos), is also written on purple-dyed vellum in silver and gold. There are fragmentary remains of a sumptuous volume of the _Eusebian Canons_ which are written on gilt vellum and beautifully ornamented. In Trinity college, Dublin, there is a famous volume--the _Book of Kells_. This is conceded to be in some respects the finest ancient manuscript in Europe, having no equal as a specimen of Irish illumination and writing. It is a copy of the Gospels, written, it is believed, about the sixth century and was the possession of the Church of Kells until it came into the custody of Trinity college in 1661. A space of this book measuring three-quarters of an inch by one-half an inch, examined under a powerful microscope, was found to contain no fewer than one hundred and fifty-eight interlacements of a slender ribbon pattern formed with white lines edged by black. Professor George F. Wright refers to a remarkable Spanish manuscript for which the late Mr. J. P. Morgan paid the sum of $30,000 in 1910.