work formed by
bands, ribbons and cords, which are curved and twisted and
interwoven in the most intricate way, something like basket work
infinitely varied in pattern. These are intermingled and
alternated with zigzags, waves, spirals, and lozenges; while
here and there among the curves are seen the faces or forms of
dragons, serpents, or other strange-looking animals, their tails
or ears or tongues elongated and woven till they become merged or
lost in the general design. . . . The pattern is so minute and
complicated as to require the aid of a magnifying glass to
examine it. . . . Miss Stokes, who has examined the _Book of
Kells,_ says of it: 'No effort hitherto made to transcribe any
one page of it has the perfection of execution and rich harmony
of color which belongs to this wonderful book. It is no
exaggeration to say that, as with the microscopic works of
Nature, the stronger the magnifying power brought to bear on it,
the more is this perfection seen. No single false interlacement
or uneven curve in the spirals, no faint tiace of a trembling
hand or wandering thought can be detected.'"

The same author tells us that someone took the trouble to count,
through a magnifying glass, in the _Book of Armagh,_ in a "small
space scarcely three quarters of an inch in length by less than
half an inch in width, no less than one hundred and fifty-eight
interlacements of a slender ribbon pattern formed of white lines
edged with black ones."--One of these manuscripts, sometimes,
would be given as a king's ransom.

An unmasculine art, it may be said; and enormous laborious skill
spent upon tribial creation. But once again, the age was pralaya;
all Europe was passing into, or quite sunk in, pralaya. The Host
of Souls was not then holding the western world; there was but a
glint and flicker of their wings over Ireland as they passed
elsewhere; there was no thorough entering in to take possession.
But the island (perhaps) is the Western Lay-center, and a
critical spot; the veils of matter there are not very thick;
and that mere glint and flicker was enough to call forth all this
wonderful manifestation of beauty. If I emphasize over-much, it
is because all this talk about 'inferior races,'--and because
Ireland has come in for so much opprobrium, one way and another,
on that score. But people do not know, and they will not think,
that those races are superior in which the Crest-Wave is rearing
itself; and that their su