rks of punctuation, or accents; a small interval of the
breadth of a letter at the end of particular sections serving as a
simple mode of punctuation. The number of such divisions into sections
is very considerable,--one hundred and seventy occurring in St.
Matthew; sixty-one in St. Mark; one hundred and fifty-two in St. Luke;
and eighty in St. John,--and in this respect the Vatican Codex is
unique. Where these divisions do not occur, the writing is continuous
for several consecutive pages. Thus, while each of the beatitudes,
each of the parables, and each of the series of generations in the
genealogies of our Lord, are marked off into separate paragraphs by
the small empty spaces referred to, there is no break in the text from
the twenty-fourth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of
St. Matthew to the seventeenth verse of the twentieth chapter. So much
has space been economised, that when the writer finished one book he
began another at the top of the very next column; and throughout the
manuscript there are very few breaks, and only one entire column left
blank. This empty space is very significant; it occurs at the end of
the eighth verse of the sixteenth chapter of St. Mark's Gospel,--thus
omitting altogether the last twelve verses with which we are familiar.
That this was done purposely is evident, for it involved a departure
from the writer's usual method of continuous writing. The blank column
testifies that he knew of the existence of this gap at the end of the
Gospel, but did not know of any thoroughly trustworthy material with
which to fill it up. And acting upon this authority our Revisers have
printed the passage that has been supplied as an appendix, and not as
a portion of the original Gospel of St. Mark. The only attempt at
ornamentation in the Vatican manuscript is found at the end of
Lamentations, Ezekiel, St. John's Gospel, and the Acts of the
Apostles, where "an arabesque column of crossed lines, with dots in
the intersections at the edge," and surmounted by the well-known
monogram of Christ, so frequent in the inscriptions of the Catacombs,
composed of the letter P in a cruciform shape, has been delicately and
skilfully executed by the pen of the scribe. Most of the books have
also brief titles and subscriptions.

Such was the original state of the Codex, but the critic of the ninth
or tenth century already referred to introduced a great many changes.
Not only did he deepen the colour of t