[4] Of the collection of the Duc de Berri we read that some of the Bibles cost 300 livres, a Cité de Dieu 200, a Livy 35, and so forth.
Another class of subjects of the art to which allusion has already been made, consists of official documents, such as charters, grants, diplomas, &c., the dignity of which it appears to have been not unusual to enhance by the aid of ornamentation. As far as can be gathered, however, the custom seems to have obtained more in Italy than in this country; and it is only mentioned here, partly as exhibiting a distinct department of the art, and partly because one of the most striking specimens, to which reference will be made, is a grant by a Duke of Milan to his wife, of lands in the territories of Novara Pavia and Milan, (1494,) and which for beauty of conception, excellence of execution, and above all chasteness of tone, has not its equal among all the specimens adduced. Such a grant is a sort of counterpart to our marriage settlement; but this may be the best place to warn beginners not to confound law engrossing with illumination. The former is—or was, and might again become—a beautiful art of itself; some magnificent specimens of it exist—the charter of the law society for one—but the arts are distinct and the characters different. The only work in which the two frequently meet in these days, and present in that combination a very fair reproduction, by the way, of these very charters and diplomas of which we are now treating, is the engrossment of those singularly worded documents in which a public body is wont to inform an exalted personage, that they “beg to approach her with the profoundest, &c., &c., &c.,” in short, of an address.
There yet remains to mention another department of the art, which during the last few years has become a very favourite and somewhat popular vehicle for its revival and development. This is what is generally known as “scroll work,” under which head, though the title is strictly applicable to but one sort, it is proposed to include, for convenience’ sake, all sorts of writing on, or attached to walls. The growth of this department of the art may be easily traced in connexion with the growth of intelligence and learning generally. In days when few besides ecclesiastics could read, it was a very obvious mode of instruction—akin to what goes on now in the nursery and the infant school—to cover interior walls, and especially those of churches, with pictures, illustrating, either by actual historical events or in allegory, those moral and religious lessons which it was desired to inculcate; and many such fresco paintings, as they are curiously enough called, have recently come to light from under the coats of whitewash with which modern economy had carefully covered them up—and though this method of instruction, through the medium of wall painting, never quite died out, and has been the subject of a noble resuscitation in these days, yet it was again obviously natural that, as people more generally acquired the power of reading, and as, simultaneously, a feeling against any sort of figures inside churches—always except the lion and unicorn of the Caroline days—sprung up, those lessons which had hitherto been pictorially should now be directly inculcated; in short, that the picture book should be laid aside for the grammar. There came to help a canon, ordering the setting up of the Lord’s Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments, and thus by degrees texts of scripture came to appear along the string courses, following the spring of the arches, or adorning the side walls, &c. Modern architects have availed themselves largely of this custom; and in many modern churches, not only are texts introduced as features in the architecture, but also in quaintly-devised scrolls along the walls, whilst the Creed, &c. have been made the vehicle of elaborate ornamentation at the east end.