MS. 1

ms. 1, e. ix.), and in a series of cuttings from a missal (add. ms. 29,704-29,705) in the british museum. but the promise of this new school was not to be fulfilled. the same style of border decoration was carried into the 15th century, and good examples are found down to the middle of it, but a general deterioration soon sets in. two mss. must, however, be specially mentioned as surviving instances of the fine type of work which could still be turned out early in the century; and, curiously, they are both the productions of one and the same illuminator, the dominican, john siferwas. the first is a fragmentary lectionary (brit. mus., harl. ms., 7026) executed for john, lord lovel of tichmersh, who died in 1408; the other is the famous sherborne missal, the property of the duke of northumberland, a large volume completed about the same time for the benedictine abbey of sherborne in dorsetshire. certainly other mss. of equal excellence must have existed; but they have now perished. after the middle of the 15th century english illumination may be said to have ceased, for the native style disappears before foreign imported art. this failure is sufficiently accounted for by the political state of the country and the distractions of the war of the roses. in france the 15th century opened more auspiciously for the art of illumination. brilliant colouring and the diapered background glittering with gold, the legacy of the previous century, still continue in favour for some time; the border, too, of ivy-leaf tracery still holds its own. but in actual drawing there are signs, as time advances, of growing carelessness, and the artist appears to think more of the effect of colour than of draughtsmanship. this was only natural at a time when the real landscape began to replace the background of diaper and conventional rocks and trees. in the first quarter of the century the school of paris comes prominently to the front with such magnificent volumes as the book of hours of the regent, john plantagenet, duke of bedford, now in the british museum; and the companion ms. known as the sobieski hours, at windsor. in these examples, as is always the case with masterpieces, we see a great advance upon earlier methods. the miniatures are generally exquisitely painted in brilliant colours and the drawing is of a high standard; and in the borders now appear natural flowers intermingled with the conventional tracery--a new idea which was to be carried further as the century advanced. the psalter executed at paris for the boy-king henry vi. (cotton ms. domitian a. xviii.) is another example of this school, rather of earlier type than the bedford