ely. The
fingers are bent, so as to represent the hand in the attitude of
benediction.

But there is another relic of St. Patrick and his times of scarcely less
interest. The _Domhnach Airgid_[142] contains a copy of the Four
Gospels, which, there is every reason to believe, were used by the great
apostle of Ireland. The relic consists of two parts--the shrine or case
and the manuscript. The shrine is an oblong box, nine inches by seven,
and five inches in height. It is composed of three distinct covers, in
the ages of which there is obviously a great difference. The inner or
first cover is of wood, apparently yew, and may be coeval with the
manuscript it is intended to preserve. The second, which is of copper
plated with silver, is assigned to a period between the sixth and
twelfth centuries, from the style of its scroll or interlaced ornaments.
The figures in relief, and letters on the third cover, which is of
silver plated with gold, leave no doubt of its being the work of the
fourteenth century.

The last or external cover is of great interest as a specimen of the
skill and taste in art of its time in Ireland, and also for the highly
finished representations of ancient costume which it preserves. The
ornaments on the top consist principally of a large figure of the
Saviour in _alto-relievo_ in the centre, and eleven figures of saints in
_basso-relievo_ on each side in four oblong compartments. There is a
small square reliquary over the head of our divine Lord, covered with a
crystal, which probably contained a piece of the holy cross. The smaller
figures in relief are, Columba, Brigid, and Patrick; those in the second
compartment, the Apostles James, Peter, and Paul; in the third, the
Archangel Michael, and the Virgin and Child; in the fourth compartment a
bishop presents a _cumdach_, or cover, to an ecclesiastic. This,
probably, has a historical relation to the reliquary itself.

One prayer uttered by St. Patrick has been singularly fulfilled. "May my
Lord grant," he exclaims, "that I may never lose His people, which He
has acquired in the ends of the earth!" From hill and dale, from camp
and cottage, from plebeian and noble, there rang out a grand "Amen." The
strain was caught by Secundinus and Benignus, by Columba and Columbanus,
by Brigid and Brendan. It floated away from Lindisfarne and Iona, to
Iceland and Tarentum. It was heard on the sunny banks of the Rhine, at
Antwerp and Cologne, in Oxford, in Pavia, a