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marginal notes, the name of the scribe, with date, appear in red, the 

 substance employed being cinnabar or minium. In Liturgies, the 

 directions for the priest and the congregation, in performing their devo- 

 tions, were written in red letters, whence the corresponding parts in 

 modern Liturgies are still called the Rubrick. In some few MSS. the 

 letters are found written in green, yellow, purple, or blue. 



But a much more remarkable mode of gratifying taste and luxury 

 was the use of gold and silver for writing-ink. The antients possessed 

 the method (not now known in Europe) of suspending the attenuated 

 particles of the precious metals in some tenacious fluid, so as to adapt 

 them for the delineation of letters, which were inscribed in the ordinary 

 mode, and then burnished by being rubbed with something very smooth 

 and hard. Many sumptuous specimens still remain. They are, for the 

 most part, MSS. of the Sacred Scriptures, consisting of parchment, 

 which is sometimes stained of a purple or violet colour. In the imperial 

 library at Vienna is a very antient Greek MS. of part of the Book of 

 Genesis, written in large or uncial letters of gold and silver, upon violet- 

 coloured parchment ; and another MS. of the same material, containing 

 fragments of the Gospels of Mark and Luke. Montfaucon mentions a 

 Latin MS. of the Book of Psalms in the library of St. Germains des 

 Pres, at Paris, in which the letters were all delineated in silver upon 

 similar parchment, excepting the titles to the psalms and the proper 

 names, which were in gold. 



In the public library at Abbeville there is now a manuscript of the 

 Gospels, presented in the year 793 by Charlemagne to his son-in-law 

 Angilbert, abbot of St. Roque. It is written in characters of gold 

 upon vellum stained with purple. According to the chronicle of 

 Hariulfe this volume was formerly covered with silver plates, encrusted 

 with gold and precious stones. M. Du Somerard gives, in his "Arts au 

 Moyen Age," a fac-simile of the first page, in which St. Matthew is seen 

 engaged in writing his gospel. In the same page we have a specimen 

 of the writing, including, on a large scale, the capital letter P highly 

 ornamented. 



The instruments antiently used in writing upon paper or parchment 

 were made either from reeds, (calami,) or from the quills of birds, (pennae.) 

 The reed (which is still used in some parts of Asia) was by far the most 

 antient instrument of the two ; and it appears, even after the introduc- 

 tion of quills, to have been the more common. Accordingly we find 

 frequent mention of the calamus or reed in the writings of antiquity ; 

 and the sculptors and painters of various ages, in delineating the figures 

 of persons engaged in writing, place tliis implement in their hands. 

 The thickness of the strokes in many antient manuscripts is attiibutable 



