CYRIL DAVENPORT them when found. I feel that a really unbiased judgment will frequently recognise native English book ornamentation to be characteristically large and dignified, whereas foreign motives, espe- cially French, are comparatively small and frittered. The great French binder Le Gascon has undoubtedly had a more widespread influence on book decoration than any other master, but his example has rather affected treatment of detail than general arrangement of design, and it has unquestionably had a good effect on most of our schools of binding during and after the seventeenth century. The marvellous delicacyof Le Gascon's tooling will always be a model for such work; indeed it may be conceded that, however much we may have borrowed ideas of detail from our neighbours, we have never yet approached them in the technical perfection of their execution. Several very remarkable bindings were made for Charles I. and his sons at Little Gidding, in Huntingdonshire, by the so-called ' nuns' in Nicolas Ferrar's well-known establishment there. One, at least, of these was bound in leather for Charles I. by Mary Collet, a large 'Harmony of the Gospels,' dated 1635, in black morocco richly tooled in gold, but without any Royal emblems. It is recorded and described in Peckard's 'Memoirs of the Life of Mr. Nicolas Ferrar,' and is a well-known and universally admired piece of work. The designof the ornamentation is a circular centre with quarter-circles at the corners, filled in with innumerable small stamps. There is, also in the British Museum, a ' History of the Israelites, collected out of the Bookes of Kings and Chronicles,' made at the King's express desire, bound in black morocco, and curiously tooled in gold with a nest of parallel rectangular panels having small fleurons at the angles, and a centre ornament. There is in the Royal Library at Windsor a small copy of ' The Gate of Tongues Unlocked,' printed at London in 1631, by John Anchoran, bound in black morocco for Charles, Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles Il., which I believe is also Little Gidding work. It has the ostrich plume in the centre. But more curious than the leather bindings are those in stamped velvet which were made at Little Gidding. Peckard mentions a book describedby John Ferrar as having beenbound for the King in crimson velvet, a ' Harmony of the Gospels.' This volume has not been identified in a satisfactory manner, some authorities assert- ing that it is no other than the 1635 Harmony just described, in leather, but that it originally had a loose velvet cover, which is now lost. I do not think this is likely, as the front edges of the boards have a projecting strip of loose leather which would have made it very difficult for such a cover to fit properly. Most of the velvet bindings made at Little Gidding are very large, someof them being over two feet long, while the smallest runs 5
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