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because the book itself has been carefully preserved in the archives of 

 the country, and may be seen at this day in the chapter house at West- 

 minster. Many other instances might be adduced where the dates 

 may be pretty nearly fixed by collateral evidence derived from the names 

 of persons or things introduced into the body of the writing itself. 



The substance written upon (as already mentioned) is to be attended 

 to. Parchment was employed long before cotton paper, which did not 

 come into use until the tenth century, and was in its turn superseded 

 by that manufactured from linen. It is thus that the imposture practised 

 by the ecclesiastics of St. Mark's church at Venice has been exposed. 

 They have been accustomed for centuries to exhibit to the curious a 

 certain mouldy and illegible manuscript, as being the original Gospel 

 written by the hand of that apostle himself. On being submitted, 

 however, to the examination of competent persons, it has been lately 

 found to be composed of cotton paper, which at once upsets these absurd 

 pretensions. 



A much better criterion may be found in the /orm of the letters. The 

 earliest manuscripts which have been left to us are written in Uncials, 

 or what we should now call large capital letters, the same as those 

 which appear on monumental and other contemporaneous inscriptions 

 upon stone or on metallic coins. These Uncials were in general use 

 until the ninth and tenth centuries, when small letters began to be used 

 for greater convenience and dispatch. In the Codex AUxandrinus we 

 have a noble specimen of Uncial writing. This celebrated manuscript, 

 which is deposited in the British Museum, is of the fifth or sixth century, 

 and is probably not surpassed in value by any other manuscript in the 

 world. In the most antient manuscripts we find no division of words, 

 nor do accents make their appearance, excepting that sometimes they 

 have been inserted by a more modem hand. Again, it was not until 

 the twelfth century that writers bethought themselves of distinguishing 

 the letter I by a hair-stroke placed over it, which in the fifteenth century 

 dwindled into a mere dot. 



At this period various forms of writing were introduced which serve 

 to fix their age ; but an enumeration of these would lead us beyond the 

 limits to which we must now restrict ourselves. It is proper however 

 to remark, that Contractions then became exceedingly common in con- 

 sequence of the scarcity of parchment, and these Contractions were 

 carried to such an extreme as to render many manuscripts almost 

 unintelligible. Much study and much comparison are required to enable 

 us in many cases to pronounce with accuracy what may b3 the age of 

 this or that manuscript. But the best judges — such as Mabillon and 

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