rs old. It
has quite a fresh and recent look; indeed many manuscripts not fifty
years old look much more ancient. No one, looking at the faded
handwriting of Tasso, Petrarch, and Henry VIII., beside it, would
imagine that they were newer by upwards of twelve hundred years. This
peculiarity it shares in common with the architectural remains of
imperial Rome, which time has dealt so tenderly with that they appear
far more recent than the picturesque ruins of our medieval castles and
abbeys. This singular look of freshness in the Vatican manuscript is
owing to three causes. In the first place, the vellum upon which it is
written is exceedingly fine and close-grained in texture, and
therefore has resisted the dust and discoloration of centuries, just
as the thin and close-grained Roman brick has withstood the ravages of
time. Every one is struck with the wonderful beauty of this vellum,
composed of the delicate skins of very young calves. And this feature
is a further proof of the high antiquity of the Codex, for the oldest
manuscripts are invariably written on the thinnest and whitest vellum,
while those of later ages are written on thick and rough parchment
which speedily became discoloured. In the second place, we have reason
to believe that the manuscript was for many ages almost hermetically
sealed in some forgotten recess of the Lateran and Vatican Libraries,
and thus unconsciously guarded from the attacks of time. In the third
place, a careful scrutiny of the individual lines reveals the curious
fact that the whole manuscript, six or seven centuries after it had
been written, was gone over by a writer, who, finding the letters
faint and yellow, had touched them up with a blacker and more
permanent ink.

It is a strange circumstance that none of the facsimile
representations of the pages of the manuscript that have been
published give a correct idea of the original, with the exception of
that of Dean Burgon in 1871. Not only do the number of lines in a
given space in all the so-called facsimiles differ from that of the
manuscript, but the general character of the letters is widely
different. The importance of seeing the original, therefore, for
purposes of study, is apparent. The uncial letters are very small and
neat, upright and regular, and their breadth is nearly equal to their
height. They are very like those in the manuscript rolls of
Herculaneum. Originally the manuscript had no ornamental initial
letters, ma