In the centre is a double red rose with separate petals, and among the other flowers are corn-flowers, honeysuckles, carnations, strawberries, and several leaves, all worked in the same way, and appliques at their edges.  Some, however, of the larger leaves and petals are ornamentally fastened down to the linen by small coloured stitches arranged in lines or patterns over their surfaces, as well as by the edge stitches.  There are several spangles scattered about in the spaces on the linen, and the edge is bound with green silk and gold.  On the book itself to which this cover belongs there is a good deal of the same needle-point work, probably executed by the same hand; but the cover is a finer piece altogether than the book,—­in fact it is the finest example of such work I have ever seen.

[Illustration:  2—­Embroidered Cover for New Testament.  London, 1640.]

Abroad there have been made at various times embroidered bindings for books, but in no country except England has there been any regular production of them.  I have come across a few cases in England of foreign work, the most important of which I will shortly describe.  In the British Museum is an interesting specimen bound in red satin, and embroidered with the arms of Felice Peretti, Cardinal de Montalt, who was afterwards Pope Sixtus V.; the coat-of-arms has a little coloured silk upon it, but the border and the cardinal’s hat with tassels are all outlined in gold cord.  The work is of an elementary character.  The book itself is a beautiful illuminated vellum copy of Fichet’s Rhetoric, printed in Paris in 1471, and presented to the then Pope, Sixtus IV.  In the same collection are a few more instances of Italian embroidered bindings, always heraldic in their main designs, the workmanship not being of any particular excellence or character.  Perhaps altogether the most interesting Italian work of this kind was done on books bound for Cardinal York, several of which still remain, embroidered with his coat-of-arms, one of them being now in the Royal Library at Windsor.  Although the actual workmanship on these books is foreign, we may perhaps claim them as having been suggested or made by the order of the English Prince himself, inheriting the liking for embroidered books from his Stuart ancestors.

French embroidered books are very rare, and I do not know of any examples in England.  Two interesting specimens, at least, are in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and are described and figured in Bouchot’s work on the artistic bindings in that library.  The earlier is on a book of prayers of the fifteenth century, bound in canvas, and worked with ‘tapisserie de soie au petit point,’ or as I should call it, tent-, or tapestry-, stitch.  It represents the Crucifixion and a saint, but M. Bouchot remarks of it, ’La composition est grossiere et les figures des plus rudimentaires.’