It was in the second half of the seventh century that the Celtic art of Eastern Ireland reached its highest point of perfection. To this period belongs the famous _Book of Kells_, now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, which was probably written between 680 and 700, and for many years was, with its jewelled gold covers, the principal treasure of the cathedral church at Kells[61]. This church had been founded by Saint Columba, and so in old times this marvellous manuscript was usually known as "the Great Gospels of Saint Columba." _Perfect workmanship._ No words can describe the intricate delicacy of the ornamentation of this book, lavishly decorated as it is with all the different varieties of pattern mentioned above, the most remarkable among them being the ingeniously intricate patterns formed by interlaced and knotted lines of colour, plaited in and out, with such amazingly complicated lines of interlacement that one cannot look at the page without astonishment at the combined taste, patience, unfaltering certainty of touch and imaginative ingenuity of the artist. The wonderful minuteness of the work, examined through a microscope, fills one with wonder at the apparently superhuman eyesight of the scribe. _Complex interlacings._ With regard to the intricate interlaced ornaments in which (with the aid of a lens) each line can be followed out in its windings and never found to break off or lead to an impossible loop of knotting, it is evident that the artist must have enjoyed, not only an aesthetic pleasure in the invention of his pattern, but must also have had a distinct intellectual enjoyment in his work, such as a skilful mathematician feels in the working out of a complicated geometrical problem. _Microscopic intricacy._ The combined skill of eye and hand shown in the minute plaits of the _Book of Kells_ places it among the most wonderful examples of human workmanship that the world has ever produced. By the aid of a microscope Mr Westwood counted in the space of one inch no less than 158 interlacements of bands or ribands, each composed of a strip of white bordered on both sides with a black line. Giraldus Cambrensis, who visited Ireland in 1185 as secretary to Prince John, writes in the most enthusiastic language of the splendour of a similar manuscript of the _Gospels_ which he saw in Kildare Cathedral. It shows, he says, superhuman skill, worthy of angels' hands, and he was lost in wondering admiration at the sight. _Copies of jewellery._ _Primitive spiral patterns._