fterwards Christ's servant Columba came from Scotia (Ireland)
to Britain, to preach the word of God to the Picts."

[Illustration: DETAIL FROM THE DURHAM BOOK]

The intricacy of the interlacing decoration is so minute that it
is impossible to describe it. Each line may be followed to its
conclusion, with the aid of a strong magnifying glass, but cannot
be clearly traced with the naked eye. Westwood reports that, with a
microscope, he counted in one square inch of the page, one hundred
and fifty-eight interlacements of bands, each being of white, bordered
on either side with a black line. In this book there is no use of
gold, and the treatment of the human form is most inadequate.
There is no idea of drawing except for decorative purposes; it
is an art of the pen rather than of the brush--it hardly comes
into the same category as most of the books designated as
illuminated manuscripts. The so-called Durham Book, or the Gospels
of St. Cuthbert, was executed at the Abbey of Lindisfarne, in 688,
and is now in the British Museum. There is a legend that in the
ninth century pirates plundered the Abbey, and the few monks who
survived decided to seek a situation less unsafe than that on the
coast, so they gathered up their treasures, the body of the saint,
their patron, Cuthbert, and the book, which had been buried with
him, and set out for new lands. They set sail for Ireland, but a
storm arose, and their boat was swamped. The body and the book
were lost. After reaching land, however, the fugitives discovered
the box containing the book, lying high and dry upon the shore,
having been cast up by the waves in a truly wonderful state of
preservation. Any one who knows the effect of dampness upon parchment,
and how it cockles the material even on a damp day, will the more
fully appreciate this miracle.

Giraldus Cambriensis went to Ireland as secretary to Prince John,
in 1185, and thus describes the Gospels of Kildare, a book which
was similar to the Book of Kells, and his description may apply
equally to either volume. "Of all the wonders of Kildare I have
found nothing more wonderful than this marvellous book, written
in the time of the Virgin St. Bridget, and, as they say, at the
dictation of an angel. Here you behold the magic face divinely
drawn, and there the mystical forms of the Evangelists, there an
eagle, here a calf, so closely wrought together, that if you look
carelessly at them, they would seem rather like a unif