ing over the matchless pages of these old volumes,
and seeing them reveal the passages of the poet or romancist, as
understood by the men of the Middle Ages, to whom they were addressed,
or giving us pictures of life and manners of which we possess no other
record. Their value as adjuncts to books, when simply decorative, is now
very generally acknowledged; and the ladies of the present day rival the
cloistered recluses in labouring, like them, to enrich a cherished
volume. It is, however, the art of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries that is now especially imitated, and the reason is to be found
in its showy elaboration of design and colour. There is an earlier
style that presents strong claims to attention, that of the two
preceding centuries, specimens of which are given in Figs. 17-21. In
them will be noticed the Orientalism that occasionally prevails, and
shows its Byzantine parentage; a trace of the Greek volute and acanthus
leaf is visible in Figs. 20 and 21; in the others we seem to look on
Turkish design. The applicability of such fragments of ornament is
manifold.

[Illustration: Fig. 17.]

[Illustration: Fig. 18.]

[Illustration: Fig. 19.]

[Illustration: Fig. 20.]

[Illustration: Fig. 21.]

[Illustration: Figs. 22, 23, 24, and 25.]

When the art of engraving aided the press in producing works of a
decorative order, we occasionally turn over pages in which the
master-minds of the day taxed their powers of invention. The old
wood-engravers were supplied by designers with drawings of the best
class, and very quaint and original are the ornaments which embellish
the books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,--particularly such
as were published in Germany, or at Lyons, the latter city being then
most eminent for the taste and beauty of its illustrated volumes, the
former for a bolder but quainter character of art. There are useful
hints to be had in the pages of all, for such as would avail themselves
of minor book-ornament. To render our meaning more clear, we select a
series of scrolls (Figs. 22-25) for inscriptions from German books, of
the early part of the sixteenth century, and which might be readily and
usefully adapted to modern exigencies, when dates or mottoes are
required either by the painter or sculptor. Ornamental frameworks for
inscriptions abound in old books, and are not unfrequently of striking
design and peculiar elaboration; we give an example in Fig. 26, from a
volume da