In the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, is preserved a very famous book, known as the _Book of Kells_, a monument of Irish learning and art in that period when Ireland most justly earned the glorious title of ‘Insula Sanctorum.’ One of the full-page illuminations which adorn that book represents a scene of the Temptation, in which Jesus is on the pinnacle and Satan is near. Such is the action represented: but besides the action the same picture conveys also a reflection or comment upon the action. Lower down, and more in the body of the building, there is a window at which is seen a majestic personage holding a sceptre in either hand, which leans and rests on either shoulder. At first sight the effect is quaint, bizarre, and puzzling; but a little attention makes all plain. It becomes clear that a contrast is intended between the humiliation and the triumph of the Christ; and perhaps also, by the association of ideas which the last two verses of St. Matthew’s Gospel have made familiar, to suggest the duty (zealously discharged by the early Irish Church) of missionary devotion. No one who has given time and thought to this picture can doubt that the two-sceptered figure is Christ. Here is no question of the pontiff of Rome. In the seventh century, to which the _Book of Kells_ is assigned, the papal claims were not admitted, much less glorified, by those of the Scotian rite. Therefore the interpretation of that Irish picture is quite simple, and it represents the glorified Christ inhabiting his temple and looking out over his Church as Lord of heaven and earth[24]. Though we know only of a single extant copy of this picture, we may confidently assume that among the manifold activities of the monks and hermits and missionaries and pilgrims from Ireland it was multiplied and disseminated. It is (I think) impossible to compare our Figure of the ninth century with that of the seventh, without coming to the conclusion that the one is a descendant of the other. We need not be incredulous about the chance of Alfred’s being acquainted with Irish iconography. The narrative in the Chronicle (Ā. 891) of three Irish exiles who found their way to king Alfred, reflects a valuable light on his kindly relations with the learned and pious from the sister island. This connexion was neither new nor immature. When they found themselves ashore on the coast of Cornwall they set out ‘at once’—such is the effect of SONA—for king Alfred[25].