quainted with Greek and Hebrew as well as with Latin; and this we think could be said of very few of the continental clergy of that time. From the time of Columbanus for several centuries similar bands of missionaries went forth from Ireland and Scotland, and founded monasteries all over the continent, so that traces of them are to be found from Iceland to Italy. Gradually, however, these monasteries submitted to the jurisdiction of the Pope, and in Scotland and Ireland the Celtic Church disappeared like the Celtic land tenures before the advance of the general European system.

One of the leading distinctions of the Celtic monks was that they were diligent scribes. They developed a distinct style of writing and a most elaborate and beautiful style of ornamentation. Their manuscripts exist in large numbers. on the continent in various places, and from these Zeuss, a learned German, reconstructed the ancient Irish language. On this subject Dr Reeves says-" It is a remarkable fact that the most important contribution ever made to the literature of the Irish language was the work of a man who never set foot on Irish soil. A foreigner, a German, in every way alien to the genius and manners of the people of Ireland, gathered from Helvetia and other parts of the continent the literary remains of the Irish as they were a thousand years ago, and from them reconstructed their ancient language," a feat which, as Dr Reeves says, could not have been performed in Ireland itself-for rich as Ireland is in national manuscripts, she has, except in a few fragments, none in the vernacular language earlier than the twelfth century-not be it observed that some of the compositions which have come down to us are not as old as St Columba himself, but the successive scribes who have copied them have modernised the language to suit their own time, and the earlier manuscripts have not survived.

Of the books more immediately connected with Scotland our author describes two-the Book of Deer and the Life of St Columba by Adamnan. Neither of these is now in Scotland. The Book of Deer was acquired by the University of Cambridge as part of the library of John Moor, Bishop of Norwich, in 1815. How it was acquired by the Bishop is not known, and it was not till 1858 that its real character was discovered. It consists of 86 parchment-folios written on both sides, and contains parts of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the whole of the gospel of John, a fragment of the office for the visitation of the sick, and the apostles' creed, and the pages are surrounded with ornamental borders of interlaced work peculiar to Celtic manuscripts, which we shall afterwards notice. The gospels, the office for visitation of the sick, and the apostles' creed are in Latin, with the exception of one rubric, which is in Gaelic, and at the end there is written in Gaelic a colophon, which is translated as follows:

Be it on the conscience of every one in whom shall be for grace the Booklet with splendour, that he give a blessing on the soul of the wrectchock who wrote it.

The date of this book is, on good grounds, supposed to be not later than the eighth century, but the most interesting part of it is that on the margin and vacant spaces in the book there are a number of entries in the vernacular Gaelic of the period, and in different hands, some as late as the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These entries record various grants to the Monastery of Deer, in the north-east corner of Aberdeenshire. The

first and fullest entry gives the legend of the foundation of the Monastery, and is in the following terms :—

Columcille and Drostan, son of Crosgrath, his pupil, came from Hi, as God had shown to them, unto Abbordoboir, and Bede the Pict was mormaer of Buchan before them, and it was he that gave them that town in freedom for ever from mormaer and toisech. They came after that to the other town, and it was pleasing to Columcille, because it was full of God's grace, and he asked it of the mormaer, to wit Bede, that he should give it to him; and he did not give it, and a son of his took an illness after refusing the clerics, and he was nigh unto death. After this the mormaer went to entreat the clerics that they should make prayer for the son, that health should come to him; and he gave an offering to them from Cloch in tiprate to Cloch pette meic grarnait. They made the prayer and health came to him. After that Columcille gave to Drostan that town, and blessed it, and left as his word, "Whosoever should come against it let him not be many-yeared or victorious." Drostan's tears came on parting from Columcille. Said Columcille, "Let Dear be its name henceforward." The other entries are of the greatest interest, not only as throwing much light on the land tenures and modes of transfer of land of the time, but also as showing the great reverence in which Columcille and Drostan were held. Down to the reign of David I.—a period of five centuries-all the grants are to Columcille and Drostan; and even after that time, and not. withstanding that the old Celtic Church had given place to the Roman Church, the grants are still to God, and Columcille, and Drostan, and the Apostle Peter. The last entry is a Latin charter of David I., from which we learn that the book was produced to him and admitted as evidence that the clerics of Deer possessed their lands free of all secular service.

The Life of St Columba, by Adamnan, was discovered in 1845, in a chest in the public library of Schoffhausen. It is copied by Dorbene, who was Abbot of Iona, and died in 713-nine years after the death of Adamnan, who was himself Abbot of Iona in 670, 82 years after the death of St Columba, and, as he states, obtained his information from a "written authority anterior to my own time, or on what I have myself heard from some learned and faithful ancients unhesitatingly attesting facts the truth of which they had themselves diligently enquired into." This is undoubtedly the work of Adamnan, and a most invaluable contribution to our knowledge of the ancient Celtic Church and the history of the time, but the book is written in Latin and has in its form no distinctive Celtic characteristics.

In Ireland a number of manuscripts of very ancient date are preserved, some of which are with, we may say, more than probability, supposed to be written by St Columba himself, and the history of some of these as given by our author is most interesting. The great and distinguishing characteristic of all these, however, as of the Irish manuscripts preserved on the continent, is the style of ornamentation which is no less remarkable for its laborious and careful execution, its wonderful elaboration and beauty, than for the remarkable fact that it is a style peculiar to Celtic manuscripts, is found in no others, and is therefore a distinct outcome and manifestation of Celtic culture. The most remarkable of these is perhaps the Book of Kells or Gospel of Columcille. It is mentioned in the annals of Ulster, under the date 1006, as being the principal relic of the western world on account of its remarkable cover, and as having been stolen from the Monastery of Kells, and found after two months with the gold stolen off its cover. Dr Westwood, the greatest living authority, says "it is

unquestionably the most elaborately executed MS, of early art now in existence." And Giraldus Cambrensis, who saw it in the twelfth century, says of it :

The more frequently I behold it, the more diligently I examine it, the more numerous are the beauties I discover in it, and the more I am lost in renewed admiration of it. Neither could Appelles himself execute the like. They really seem to have been designed and painted by a hand not mortal.

The manuscript is now in the library of the University of Dublin. It is not improbable that it was the work of St Columba-at an rate it was executed about his time and by a Celtle scribe who lived in a drystone beehive, or wattled hut.

The bells were another distinguishing feature of the Celtic Church. It possessed a type of bell as distinct as that of its churches and of its style of illumination. Without a drawing it is difficult to give an idea of the form of these bells, but our author describes them as "tall, narrow, and tapering with flattened ends and bulging sides, and having a looped handle at the top." The greater number of those now extant are made of iron, of a flat plate hammered into shape and riveted at the side, and coated with bronze, but a few are cast of bronze. Several of these exist in Scotland, a number in Ireland, one or two in England and Wales, and one or two on the continent in monasteries originally founded by Celtic missionaries. They are found nowhere else, are markedly distinct from the bells of any other church, and there can be no doubt that those which exist are very ancient, and they are generally associated with one or other of the Celtic saints. In this neighbourhood there is one iron bell of this class at Cawdor Castle, the history of which is not known; and a bronze one in the church at Insh. The veneration with which these bells were regarded is shown by the circumstance that many of them were enshrined in cases, ornamented in a most elaborate style. The most remarkable of these is perhaps the bell of St Patrick. This is enshrined in a most elaborately ornamented case, on which is the following inscription:

A prayer for Donald O'Lochlan, by whom this bell was made; and for Donald the successor of St Patrick, for whom it was made; and for Cathalan O'Mallcholland, the keeper of the bell; and for Cuduley O'Inmainen, with his sons, who gave them help.

Donald O'Lochlan was alive in 1105, and as the bell itself was connected, by tradition at least, with St Patrick, we presume that it is to the making of the outer case that the inscription alludes. The keepership of the bell can be traced till 1466, when it is lost sight of, but in 1798 an old schoolmaster of the name of Mulholland on his deathbed left to an old pupil a treasure which he said had been for ages handed down in his family, and which turned out to be the bell of St Patrick and its shrine.

The fourth group of relics which Mr Anderson describes, and the only other existing relics of the ancient Celtic Church, are croziers, and it is not a little remarkable that in these we again find a distinct type peculiar to the Celtic Church-that type being the simple staff with crooked head, with a straightened pendant termination to the crook. These when they belonged to or were attributed to the early saints, were regarded with great sanctity, and ultimately came to be enshrined as relics. There are

a number of these in Ireland, but only two are known to exist in Scotland. One of these is the crozier, or Bachul More, of St Moluog. For centuries it was in the keeping of a family of the name of Livingstone, who, as its hereditary keepers, held a small freehold in the island of Lismore, and were locally styled "Barons of the Bachuil." It is now in possession of the Duke of Argyll. It is a plain wooden staff, 2 feet 10 inches long, and showing that it was at one time covered with plates of gilt copper, some of which remain. The other is the crozier, or, as it was called, the Quigrich of St Fillan. This was at one time a relic of great sanctity. It was originally beyond doubt the staff of office of the successors of St Fillan as Abbots of Glendochart. The property

of this monastery (as was the case with that of the other Celtic monasteries) passed into the hands of the family of Macnab (son of the Abbot), as hereditary lay Abbots, and the Quigrich, like many other relics, passed into the custody of a lay Dewar or keeper. In 1782 an Oxford student who was travelling for pleasure in that part of the country saw the Quigrich, and a charter by James III., dated in 1487, confirming the custody of it to "Malise Doire," in the possession of a labourer named Malise Doire, in the village of Killin. He wrote to the Society of Antiquaries informing them of this, but before they took measures to secure the relic, Malise Doire emigrated to America, taking the Quigrich with him. It was lost sight of till 1876, when, by the assistance of Mr Wilson, author of the Prehistoric Annals, it was discovered in the possession of a descendant of Malise Doire, and purchased by the Society of Antiquaries, and is now in the museum in Edinburgh. It had originally been a bronze crozier of the Celtic type, ornamented with silver plates of very exquisite workmanship. When it was enshrined in a silver case the plates were removed and made part of the case or shrine, but the rest of the workmanship of the case is in every way inferior to these, and shows a decided degeneration from the ancient Celtic workmanship. In an account which he gives of this relic, Dr Stewart endeavours to prove that it was carried before the army of Bruce at Bannockburn; but Mr Anderson pronounces the evidence insufficient to bear this out, although he admits that the thing is not in itself improbable. Whether this were so or not, it will be seen that the relic is one of the very greatest possible interest, and a genuine relic of an ancient Celtic saint.

We have thus endeavoured to give some idea of the materials with which our author deals. As we have said, the history of some of the relics is in itself most interesting. To paraphrase Dr Johnston, we may say he must be cold and insensible indeed, more especially if he be a Celt, whose deepest interest is not excited and whose piety does not grow warm by the thought that we have still among us things on which the loving labour of St Columba and his contemporaries were expended. But the greatest interest of these relics lies in what they tell us of the men who laboured at them. It is as singular as it is true that in Ireland and Scotland (and between these two countries in those times it must be kept distinctly in mind that as regards the Church there was no distinction) a Christian Church arose and developed a very distinct organisation, long before the Saxons and the inhabitants of the north of Europe were converted, and apart altogether from the influence of the remains of Roman civilization and of the church which acknowledged the Bishop of Rome as its head.

From the material relics of that Church which have come down to us, and which in the book before us are so well described, we learn that the clerics of that Church were men of learning, all of them being able to read Latin, and many of them acquainted also with Greek and Hebrew. That they were men much reverencing the holy men who had been the fathers of the Church. That they were men of much piety, as shown in the care and labour with which they transcribed the sacred books and ornamented them and the other objects of their reverence. That they possessed types of churches and of church furniture peculiar to themselves, but whence derived we know not; and that they were skilful and laborious artists both with their pen and in metal. And if their houses and their churches were rude, what then? As our author has pointed out, enough of their culture remains to tell us that any conclusion from this that the men themselves were like their structures, would be rash indeed, and that the highest expression of a people's culture is not necessarily expressed in its architecture. But we will venture to draw another lesson, and it is this, that perhaps the expression of the very highest thought of these men as Christian missionaries is to be read in these very rude stone structures. It is remarkable that the earlier Celtic saints were not martyrs but the founders of monasteries, and from this we may conclude that they set up no pretensions to worldly power or influence which could have excited the hostility of the rude and barbarous tribes among whom they settled. Their business was to found small Christian colonies, in which they lived, labouring for their daily bread, and striving to win men to the truth by the example which they set of pure and simple lives. The religious idea with which they were possessed, and which drew them into desert islands to meditate and pray, and into waste places among the heathen to save souls, did not express itself in the organisation of a powerful hierarchy, or of an elaborate ecclesiastical system, but in a pure, and pious, and self-sacrificing life, It cannot be that such artists as these men vere in other departments could not, had they chosen, have built stately edifices, and we prefer to think that they were satisfied with, or, perhaps, chose the rude architecture of the people among whom they laboured, because their thoughts were set on higher things than their own comfort or a stately and pompous form of worship.

Such was the ancient Celtic Church; but, alas! like many other Celtic institutions, it has vanished; and to us now it is only left lovingly to study its relics, and stretching through the intervening darkness to try to catch something of the spirit which animated its brave and much enduring saints. To those who care to do this, we most heartily recommend the book of which we have endeavoured to give some imperfect account.

We cannot part with the book without a word as to the publisher's hand in it. It is all that could be wished, and the numerous illustrations are executed in a way that leaves nothing to be desired. In especial we would call attention to the reproductions of specimens of ornamentation from ancient manuscripts. The execution of these is beyond praise, and they give a wonderful representation of the care and marvellous elaboration of detail of the originals.