We know nothing of the internal arrangement of the churches, excepting that in some cases there is a stone bench across the east end, the altar standing a little in advance; a square version of the Basilican arrangement; for, be it remembered, the apse possibly only came into use when secular Basilicæ were converted into churches, while those under consideration were probably founded upon the traditions of churches which existed in Britain before the time of Constantine, so that our English square east-end may after all be the more primitive type, and if such were the case, it would appear that the seats of the clergy were at first along the eastern wall and behind the altar, as in the apsidal churches. To these views, however, I will not pledge myself, as we do not know how soon apses came into use. This system, too, of erecting monasteries, not with general dormitories, but with numerous private cells, seems to have been founded on the early Eastern form, of which so many existed in the deserts of the Thebaid, and of which many ancient notices exist. The most perfect remaining specimen of this kind of monastery in Ireland is one on a most minute scale founded by St. Fechin, in the seventh century, in the almost inaccessible island of Ardoilen, off the coast of Connemara, which, excepting only that all its buildings are vaulted, agrees almost precisely with Bede’s description of that founded about the same time in the island of Farne, on the Northumbrian coast, by St. Cuthbert, himself a Scot or perhaps an Irishman. Those in the north of Ireland and in Scotland seem to have been usually of timber, “_more Scotorum_,” as Bede says, and have consequently perished; but in the south and west of Ireland they were of stone, and remain, in many instances, in a more or less complete state to our own day. Some, however, in Scotland, were of stone, like those of Ireland. [Illustration: Fig. 199.--Leather Book-case.] It was in these establishments,--so severely simple in their architecture,--that the lamp of piety and learning was preserved during the darkest period of our history; sending forth its light not only among the British islands but to Continental Europe; and here were followed up even the decorative arts,--as illumination, embroidery, and jewellery. Such, no doubt, was the famous monastery of Iona, which, as an able historian says, “soon became, morally and religiously, a spectacle as glorious as any that Christendom could afford.... The school, of whatever knowledge, sacred or profane, was then within the reach of the northern people,--the nursery of many arts, the centre of a Christian colony, and the mother of priests and missionaries.”