t-stool is gold: the book, in the left hand, is red and gold: the
arabesque ornaments, in the border, are blue, red, and gold. The hair of
our Saviour is intended to be flaxen.

The text is in double columns, upon a purple ground, within an arabesque
border of red, purple, yellow, and bluish green. It is uniformly executed
in letters of gold, of which the surface is occasionally rather splendid.
It consists of a series of gospel extracts, for the whole year, amounting
to about two hundred and forty-two. These extracts terminate with "_Et ego
resuscitabo eum in novissimo die. Amen_"

Next comes a Christian Calendar, from the dominical year Dcclxxv. to
Dccxcvii. On casting the eye down these years, and resting it on that of
Dcclxxxi, you observe, in the columns of the opposite leaf, this very
important entry, or memorandum--in the undoubted writing of the time: "_In
isto Anno ivit Dominus_, REX KAROLUS, _ad scm Petrvm et baptisatus est
filius eius_ PIPPINUS _a Domino Apostolico_;" from which I think it is
evident (as is observed in the account of this precious volume in the
_Annales Encyclopediques_, vol. iii. p. 378) that this very book was
commanded to be written chiefly to perpetuate a notice of the baptism, by
Pope Adrian, of the emperor's son PIPPIN.[111] There is no appearance
whatever of fabrication, in this memorandum. The whole is coeval, and
doubtless of the time when it is professed to have been executed. The last
two pages are occupied by Latin verses, written in a lower-case, cursive
hand; but contemporaneous, and upon a purple ground. From these verses we
learn that the last scribe, or copyist, of the text of this splendid
volume, was one GODESCALE, or GODSCHALCUS, a German. The verses are
reprinted in the _Decades Philosophiques_.

This MS. was given to the _Abbey of St. Servin_, at Toulouse; and it was
religiously preserved there, in a case of massive silver, richly embossed,
till the year 1793; when the silver was stolen, and the book carried off,
with several precious relics of antiquity, by order of the President of the
Administration, (Le Sieur S*****) and thrown into a magazine, in which were
many other vellum MSS. destined ... TO BE BURNT! One's blood curdles at the
narrative. There it lay--- expecting its melancholy fate; till a Monsieur
de Puymaurin, then detained as a prisoner in the magazine, happened to
throw his eye upon the precious volume; and, writing a certain letter about
it, to a certain