The most splendid of the books that Queen Mary has left for us to admire is a manuscript of Psalms and Hymns in Latin and French of very beautiful workmanship, known as Queen Mary's Psalter. It came to the British Museum with the old royal library. It is bound in crimson velvet and has gilt clasps and corners, and on each side a large piece of embroidery appliqué. This embroidery is much worn; it is on canvas, and some of it is actually gone, but it seems to have been a conventional pomegranate, and this is all the more likely as such a design would have been a probable one for Queen Mary to use, as she had an excuse to do so by virtue of her mother's right to the emblem of Arragon. The clasps are engraved with the dragon, lion, portcullis, and fleur-de-lis, and in spite of the damage done to the volume by time and wear, it is still a splendid specimen of magnificent binding. By an inscription at the end of the volume we are informed that it was rescued from the hands of some seamen who were preparing to carry it abroad by" Baldwin Smith," who presented it to Queen Mary in 1553.

A book of hours in illuminated manuscript is beautifully bound for Queen Mary, and is finished in an unusually delicate manner. It is in calf, and has blind and gold lines. An outer border has stamps within it at intervals, in a similar style to one already described as having belonged to Edward VI. In the centre of the book is a delicate stamp of the royal coat-of-arms with the letters M. R.

At Stonyhurst College is preserved Queen Mary's own Horae in laudeum Beatissimae Virgin is Marie, Lugduni, 1558. It is covered in figured red velvet projecting over the boards at the lower edges, and with small tassels at each corner. On the lower cover is the crowned coat-of-arms in silver, enameled in the proper colors. Single ornamental letters R.E.GJ.N.A. are arranged in couples in three lines round it. On the upper board are the letters M.A.R.I.A., also in silver. The first two at the two top corners, the R crowned in the middle, and the two last letters in the two lower corners. The R in the centre is flanked by a double rose and the pomegranate of Arragon, both in silver. There are two silver clasps of ornamental pattern.

It was shown at the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition on Bookbindings in 1891, and there is a fine plate of it in their Illustrated Catalogue.
The bindings of Edward VI. and Mary, having as a chief ornament the English coat-of-arms, nevertheless bear with them no supporters. Henry VII. and Henry VIII., until 1528, used the same supporters, the dragon on the dexter side and the white greyhound on the sinister; and when Henry VIII. made a change and adopted the crowned lion as one of his supporters, he omitted the greyhound and changed the side of the dragon, so that his successors boje as their supporters a lion crowned on the dexter side and the red dragon on the sinister, and so they occur on several Elizabethan bindings.

The bindings executed for Queen Elizabeth may be conveniently divided into three classes-those bound in, or ornamented with, gold; those bound in velvet or embroidered; and those bound in leather. In this order I shall describe them. The gold, as far as I know it, is always enameled, the velvet is generally embroidered, and the leather is frequently inlaid with other and differently colored leathers. The peculiarity of sunken panels, borrowed apparently through the early Italian bindings from Oriental originals, is a remarkable specialty of Elizabethan work; as is also the first use of large corner-stamps to