this Bible is mentioned in the Emperor’s will is absolutely denied. The price registered in Evans’s sale catalogue is £1500, and the purchaser is given as Scordet, but the book was really bought in, and it is said that few of the biddings for it were genuine. After this failure fresh overtures were made to the British Museum, and in the end it was bought for that library for £750, which must be considered a small price for so splendid and interesting a book. There was some correspondence on this Bible in the Gentleman’s Magazine, in which Sir Frederick Madden took part. These letters are reprinted in Gomme’s Gentleman’s Magazine Library (“Literary Curiosities,” 1888, pp. 234-64). Another historical manuscript of particular beauty which has been several times sold by auction, and now safely reposes at the British Museum, is the famous so-called Bedford Missal (really Book of Hours), written and illuminated for John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France under Henry VI., to whom he presented the book in the year 1430. It passed into the hands of Henry II. of France, and long subsequently into those of Lady Worsley (widow of Sir Robert Worsley), from whom it was purchased by the Earl of Oxford, who bequeathed it to his daughter, the Duchess of Portland. At the latter’s sale in 1786 it was bought by James Edwards the bookseller for £213, 3s. At Edwards’s sale in 1815 it was bought for £687, 15s. by the Marquis of Blandford, who afterwards sold it to Mr. Broadley. At Broadley’s sale in 1833 Sir John Tobin bought it for £1100. Sir John’s son sold it to the bookseller from whom the British Museum purchased it in 1852.
Two instances of most interesting manuscripts sold at very inadequate prices may here be recorded. One of the most distinguished among the Ashburnham manuscripts was one known as the Albani Missal. It is a manuscript of offices, and was executed apparently for Alemanno Salviati, gonfalonier of Florence and brother-in-law of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and given by him to one of his relatives of the house of Baroncelli. This beautiful volume contains five full-page miniatures, each the work of a master. The first is by the hand of Amico Aspertini, of