the illuminator, declared that he found them most edifying, and
delightful to study. The manuscript is written on vellum by the
famous Jarry, contains a portrait of the fair Julie herself, and is
bound in morocco by Le Gascon. The happy collector who possesses
the volume now, heard vaguely that a manuscript of some interest was
being exposed for sale at a trifling price in the shop of a country
bookseller. The description of the book, casual as it was, made
mention of the monogram on the cover. This was enough for the
amateur. He rushed to a railway station, travelled some three
hundred miles, reached the country town, hastened to the
bookseller's shop, and found that the book had been withdrawn by its
owner. Happily the possessor, unconscious of his bliss, was at
home. The amateur sought him out, paid the small sum demanded, and
returned to Paris in triumph. Thus, even in the region of
manuscript-collecting, there are extraordinary prizes for the
intelligent collector.


TO KNOW IF A MANUSCRIPT IS PERFECT


If the manuscript is of English or French writing of the twelfth,
thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth centuries, it is probably
either--(1) a Bible, (2) a Psalter, (3) a book of Hours, or (4), but
rarely, a Missal. It is not worth while to give the collation of a
gradual, or a hymnal, or a processional, or a breviary, or any of
the fifty different kinds of service-books which are occasionally
met with, but which are never twice the same.

To collate one of them, the reader must go carefully through the