"In the seventh and eighth centuries we find the first tendency to form national hands, resulting in the Merovingian or Frankish hand, the Lombardic of Italy, and the Visigothic of Spain. These are the first difficult bands which we encounter; and when we remember that the object of writing is to be clear and distinct, and that the test of a good style is that it seizes on the essential points in which letters differ, and puts aside the flourishes and ornaments which disguise the simple form, we shall see how much a strong influence was needed to prevent writing from becoming obscure and degraded. That influence was found in Charles the Great. "In the field of writing it has been granted to no person but Charles the Great to influence profoundly the history of the alphabet. With rare insight and rarer taste he discountenanced the prevalent Merovingian hand, and substituted in eclectic hand, known as the Carolingian Minuscule, which way still be regarded as a model of clearness and elegance. The chief instrument in this reform was Alcuin of York, whom Charles placed, partly for this purpose, at the head of the School of Tours in A. D. 796. The selection of an Englishman for the post naturally leads us to inquire what hands were then used in England, and what amount of English influence the Carolingian Minuscule, the foundation of our modern styles, exhibits. "If we gaze in wonder on the personal influence of Charles the Great in reforming handwriting, we shall be still more struck by the spectacle presented to us by Ireland in the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries. It is the great marvel in the history of writing. Modern historians have at last appreciated the blaze of life, religions, literary, and artistic, which was kindled in the 'Isle of Saints' within a century after St. Patrick's coming (about A. D. 450); how the enthusiasm kindled by Christianity in the Celtic nature so far transcended the limits of the island, and indeed of Great Britain, that Irish missionaries and monks were soon found in the chief religious centres of Gaul, Germany, Switzerland, and North Italy, while foreigners found their toilsome way to Ireland to learn Greek! But less prominence has been given to the artistic side of this great reflex movement from West to East than to the other two. The simple facts attest that in the seventh century, when our earliest existing Irish MSS. were written, we find not only a style of writing (or indeed two) distinctive, national, and of a high type of excellence, but also a school of illumination which, in the combined lines of mechanical accuracy and intricacy, of fertile invention of form and figure and of striking arrangements of colour, has never been surpassed. And this is in the seventh century--the nadir of the rest of Europe!