every thing else (replied he) is much at your service:  fix only your hours of attendance, and our treasures are ready for your free examination.”  This was as it should be.  I enter therefore at once, my good friend, upon the task of giving you a Catalogue Raisonne of those MSS. which it was my good fortune to examine in the nine or ten days conceded to me for that purpose; and during which I seemed to receive more than ordinary attention and kindness from the principal librarians.

FRAGMENT OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS—­undoubtedly of the end of the fourth century, at earliest.  This fragment is a collection of twenty-four leaves, in a folio form, measuring twelve inches by ten, of a small portion of the Book of Genesis, written in large Greek capital letters of gold and silver, now much faded, upon a purple ground.  Every page of these twenty-four leaves is embellished with a painting, or illumination, coloured after nature, purposely executed below the text, so that it is a running graphic illustration—­as we should say—­of the subject above.

There is too small a portion of the TEXT to be of much critical importance, but I believe this Greek text to be the oldest extant of sacred writ:  and therefore I rejoiced on viewing this venerable and precious relic of scriptural antiquity.  Lambecius and Mabillon have given fac-similes of it; and I think Montfaucon also—­in his Palaeographia Graeca.  At the end of this fragment, are four pages of the Gospel of St. Luke—­or, rather, figures of the four Evangelists; which are also engraved by Lambecius, and, from him, by Nesselius and Kollarius.[113]

SACRAMENTARIUM, SEU MISSA PAPAE GREGORII, an oblong large octavo, or small folio form.  I own I have doubts about calling this volume a contemporaneous production; that is to say, of the latter end of the sixth century.  The exterior, which, on the score of art, is more precious than the interior, is doubtless however of a very early period.  It consists of an ivory figure of St. Jerome, guarded by a brass frame.  The character of the interior, as to its scription, does not appear to be older than the tenth century.

GERMAN BIBLE of the EMPEROR WENCESLAUS, in six folio volumes.  This too was another of the particularly curious MSS. which, since the account of it in my Decameron, I had much desired to see.  It is, upon the whole, an imperial production:  but as extraordinary, and even whimsical, as it is magnificent.  Of these six volumes, only three are illuminated; and of the third, only two third parts are finished.  The text is a large lower-case gothic letter, very nearly a quarter of an inch in height.  The ornamental or border illuminations have more grace and beauty than the subjects represented; although, to the eye of an antiquarian virtuoso, the representations of the unfortunate monarch will be the most interesting.

I should notice by the way, on the competent authority of M. Kopitar, that this German version of the Bible is one of the most ancient extant.  These books have suffered, in the binding, from the trenchant tools of the artist.  The gold in the illuminations is rather bright than refulgent.