with floral patterns, sometimes with portraits of
the King, or Scriptural scenes. A dealer's freak which compelled the
British Museum to buy a pair of elaborate gloves of the period rather
than lose a finely embroidered Psalter, with which they went, was
certainly a fortunate one, enabling us to realise that in hands thus
gloved these little bindings, always pretty, often really artistic, must
have looked exactly right, while their vivid colours must have been
admirably in harmony with the gay Cavalier dresses.

Besides furnishing a ground for embroidery, velvet bindings were often
decorated, in England, with goldsmith work. One of the most beautiful
little bookcovers in existence is on a book of prayers, bound for Queen
Elizabeth in red velvet, with a centre and corner pieces delicately
enamelled on gold. Under the Stuarts, again, we frequently find similar
ornaments in engraved silver, and their charm is incontestable.

Thus while for English bindings of this period in gilt leather we can
only claim that Berthelet's show some freedom in their adaptation of
Italian models, and Day's a more decided originality, we are entitled to
set side by side with this scanty record a host of charming bindings in
more feminine materials, which have no parallel in France, and certainly
deserve some recognition. After the Restoration, however, leather
quickly ousted its competitors, and a school of designers and gilders
arose in England, which, while taking its first inspiration from Le
Gascon, soon developed an individual style. In effectiveness, though not
in minute accuracy of execution, this may rank with the best in Europe.
We can trace the beginnings of this lighter and most graceful work as
early as the thirties, and it might be contended with a certain
plausibility that it began at the Universities. Certainly the two
earliest examples known to me--the copy of her _Statutes_ presented to
Charles I. by Oxford in 1634, and the Little Gidding _Harmony_
of 1635, the tools employed in which have been shown by Mr. Davenport to
have been used also by Buck, of Cambridge--are two of the finest English
bindings in existence, and in both cases, despite the multiplicity of
the tiny tools employed, there is a unity and largeness of design which,
as I have ventured to hint, is not always found even in the best French
work. The chief English bindings after the Restoration, those associated
with the name of Samuel Mearne, the King's Binder, p