es thirty-one works, many of them
in three or four volumes; and although Diemudis is not supposed to have
been an authoress, she is certainly worthy of having her name handed
down through eight centuries in witness of woman's indefatigable work in
the scriptorium. One missal prepared by Diemudis was given to the
Bishop of Treves, another to the Bishop of Augsburg, and one Bible in
two volumes is mentioned, which was exchanged by the monastery for an
estate.

We can picture to ourselves Diemudis in her conventual dress, seated in
the scriptorium, with her materials for chirography. The sun, as it
streams through the window, throws a golden light over the vellum page,
suggesting the rich hue of the gilded nimbus, while in the convent
garden she sees the white lily or the modest violet, which, typical of
the Madonna, she transfers to her illuminated borders. Thus has God ever
interwoven truth and love with their correspondences of beauty and
development in the natural world, which were open to the eyes of
Diemudis eight hundred years ago, perhaps as clearly as to our own in
these latter days. That women of even an earlier century than that of
Diemudis were permitted to read, if not to write, is proved by the
description of a private library, given in the letters of C. S. Sidonius
Apollinaris, and quoted in Edwards's "History of Libraries." This
book-collection was the property of a gentleman of the fifth century,
residing at his castle of Prusiana. It was divided into three
departments, the first of which was expressly intended for the ladies of
the family, and contained books of piety and devotion. The second
department was for men, and is rather ungallantly stated to have been of
a higher order; yet, as the third department was intended for the whole
family, and contained such works as Augustine, Origen, Varro,
Prudentius, and Horace, the literary tastes of the ladies should have
been satisfied. We are also told that it was the custom at the castle of
Prusiana to discuss at dinner the books read in the morning,--which
would tend to a belief that conversation at the dinner-tables of the
fifth century might be quite as edifying as at those of the nineteenth.

A few feminine names connected with the literature of the Middle Ages
have come down to us. The lays of Marie de France are among the
manuscripts in the British Museum. Marie's personal history, as well as
the period when she flourished, is uncertain. Her style is ex