cribendos_, in the year 1171.

Nigel in the year 1160 gave the monks of Ely two churches, ad libros
faciendos.

When the library at Croyland Abbey was burnt in 1091, seven hundred
volumes were consumed which must have been thus laboriously produced.

Fifty-eight volumes were transcribed at Glastonbury during the
government of one Abbot, about the year 1300. And in the library of
this monastery, the richest in England, there were upwards of four
hundred volumes in the year 1248.

But whilst there is sufficient cause to admire the penmen of former
days, in the mere transcription of books, shall we not marvel at the
beauty with which they were invested; the rich and brilliant
illuminations, the finely tinted paintings, the magnificent and
laborious ornament with which not merely every page, but in many
manuscripts almost every line was decorated! They, such as have been
preserved, form a valuable proportion of the riches of the principal
European libraries: of the Vatican of Rome; the Imperial at Vienna;
St. Mark's at Venice; the Escurial in Spain; and the principal public
libraries in England.

The art of thus illuminating MSS., now entirely lost, had attained the
highest degree of perfection, and is, indeed, of ancient origin. In
the remotest times the common colours of black and white have been
varied by luxury and taste. Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus mention
purple and yellow skins, on which MSS. were written in gold and
silver; and amongst the eastern nations rolls of this kind (that is
gold and silver on purple), exquisitely executed, are found in
abundance, but of a later date. Still they appear to have been
familiar with the practice at a much more remote period; and it is
probable that the Greeks acquired this art from Egypt or India. From
the Greeks it would naturally pass to the Latins, who appear to have
been acquainted with it early in the second century. The earliest
specimen of purple or rose-coloured vellum is recorded in the life of
the Emperor Maximinus the younger, to whom, in the commencement of the
third century, his mother made a present of the poems of Homer,
written on purple vellum in gold letters. Such productions were,
however, at this time very rare. The celebrated Codex Argenteus of
Ulphilas, written in silver and gold letters on a purple ground, about
360, is probably the most ancient existing specimen of this
magnificent mode of calligraphy. In the fourth century it had become
more co