Page:Textile fabrics; a descriptive catalogue of the collection of church-vestments, dresses, silk stuffs, needle-work and tapestries, forming that section of the Museum (IA textilefabricsde00soutrich).pdf/165

 of the same objects among the illuminations in old MSS. The birds and beasts on the textiles are always very much better rendered than in the wood-cuts to be found in our old black-letter books, from Caxton's days upwards, especially in such works as that of Æsop and the rest. Figures of animals and of birds in manuscripts are hardly better, as we may see in the prints of our own Sir John Maundevile's Travels, and the French "Bestiaire d'Amour," par R. de Fournival, lately edited by C. Hippeau. Scarcely better does their design fare in illuminated MSS. Belonging to the Duke of Northumberland, and now in the library at Alnwick castle is the finest Salisbury missal we have ever beheld. This tall thick folio volume was, some time during the end of the fourteenth century, begun to be written and illuminated by a Benedictine monk—one John Whas—who carried on this gorgeous book as far as page 661. From the two Leonine verses which we read there, it would seem that this labour of love carried on for years at early morn in the scriptorium belonging to Sherbourne Abbey, Dorsetshire, had broken, as well it might, the health of the monk artist, of whom it is said:—

"Librum scribendo Ion Whas monachus laborabat; Et mane surgendo multum corpus macerabat."

Among his other tastes, this Benedictine had that for Natural History, and in the beautifully illuminated Kalendar at the beginning of this full missal, almost every month is pointed out by the presence of some bird, or fish, or flower, peculiar to that season, with its name beneath it,—for instance, "Ys is a throstle," &c. However much the thrush's song may have cheered him at his work at Spring-tide peep of day, Whas did not draw his bird with half the individuality and truthfulness which we find in birds of all sorts that are figured upon Sicilian stuffs woven at the very period when the English Benedictine was at work within the cloisters of his house in Dorsetshire—a fact which may lead the ornithologist to look with more complacency upon those textiles here patterned with Italian birds.

For Botany, it has not gone so well; yet, notwithstanding this drawback, there are to be seen figured upon these textiles plants and trees which, though strangers to this land and to Europe, and their forms no doubt, oddly and clumsily represented, yet, as they keep about them the same character, we may safely believe to have a true type in nature, which at last by their help we shall be able to find out. Such is the famous "homa," or "hom,"—the sacred tree—among the ancient followers of Zoroaster, as well as the later Persians. It is to be seen figured on many silks in this collection of real or imitated Persian textiles, woven at various periods during the middle ages.