ourite
object for the needle long before this time, though unhappily the
fragility of the work was equal to its beauty, and these needleworked
covers have doubtless, in very many instances, been replaced by more
substantial binding.

The earliest specimen of this description of binding remaining in the
British Museum is "Fichetus (Guil.) Rhetoricum, Libri tres. (Impr. in
Membranis) 4to. Paris ad Sorbonae, 1471." It has an illuminated
title-page, showing the author presenting, on his knees, his book to
the Pope; and it is decorated throughout with illuminated letters and
other ornaments; for long after the invention of printing, blank
spaces were left, for the capitals and headings to be filled up by the
pencil. Hence it is that we find some books quite incomplete; these
spaces having been left, and not filled up.

When the art of illuminating still more failed, the red ink was used
as a substitute, and everybody is acquainted with books of this style.
The binding of Fitchet's 'Rhetoric' is covered with crimson satin, on
which is wrought with the needle a coat-of-arms: a lion rampant in
gold thread, in a blue field, with a transverse badge in scarlet silk;
the minor ornaments are all wrought in fine gold thread.

The next in date which I have seen there is a description of the Holy
Land, in French, written in Henry VII.'s time, and illuminated. It is
bound in rich maroon velvet, with the royal arms: the garter and motto
embroidered in blue; the ground crimson; and the fleurs-de-lys,
leopards, and letters of the motto in gold thread. A coronet, or
crown, of gold thread, is inwrought with pearls; the roses at the
corners are in red silk and gold; and there is a narrow border round
the whole in burnished gold thread.

There is an edition of Petrarch's Sonnets, printed at Venice in 1544.
It is in beautiful preservation. The back is of dark crimson velvet,
and on each side is wrought a large royal coat-of-arms, in silk and
gold, highly raised. The book belonged to Edward VI., but the arms are
not his.

Queen Mary's Psalter, containing also the history of the Old Testament
in a series of small paintings, and the work richly illuminated
throughout, had once an exterior worthy of it. The crimson velvet, of
which only small particles remain to attest its pristine richness, is
literally thread-bare; and the highly-raised embroidery of a massy
fleur-de-lys is also worn to the canvas on which it was wrought. On
one side scarc