Of Latin Biblical manuscripts we have a considerable number, including several remarkable either for their text or their artistic execution. The most important for its text is that classed A. 4, 15, and called _Codex Usserianus_; a manuscript of the Gospels written probably in the sixth century, and exhibiting an old Latin text of the Hiberno-British Recension. It is defective at the beginning and the end; every leaf also is mutilated, so that no line remains complete. With the exception of a rude cross at the end of St. Luke’s Gospel, there is no attempt at ornament. Here and there are interlinear glosses scratched as with a needle point--as, for example, in reference to the paralytic who was “borne of four,” the four are interpreted as the four evangelists. It is remarkable that the _pericopa de adultera_ is given in a text agreeing with the Vulgate. From this we may conclude--first, that the passage was not in the archetype; secondly, that the scribe had a copy of the Vulgate at hand; and thirdly, that it was from choice, not from necessity, that he copied the old Latin. The full text of this manuscript was published in _Evangelia Ante-hieronymiana_. Its history is unknown. Another MS., called _The Garland of Howth_, exhibits in St. Matthew’s Gospel a similar text, but elsewhere the Vulgate, or, in some parts, a mixed text. It is probably not earlier than the ninth century, or perhaps the tenth. Pictures of two of the evangelists remain--the others are lost. The MS. is coarsely written, and on very coarse parchment. The omissions in it, chiefly from homœoteleuton, are frequent and instructive. Some of the scribe’s blunders are curious. Thus, Matthew xxii. 42, “quid vobis videtur de operibus fidelis,” for “de χρο cuius filius;” Mark ii. 3, “qui iiii rotis portabatur;” xi. 12, “a bethania cum x essurivit ii;” xiv. 50, “discipuli omnes relinquentes eum cruci[fi]xerunt.” In Matthew xxvii. 5, an Irish gloss has got into the text--“proiectis arcadgabuth c.,” for “argenteis.” In Luke xxiii. 12 another gloss appears in the text--“opus malum malos in unum coniungunt.” Remarkable both for text and ornament is the _Book of Durrow_ (so called from Durrow, in King’s County, where St. Columba founded a monastery), a MS. of the Gospels (with the prologues, &c.), written perhaps in the seventh century. The text is a tolerably pure Vulgate. The colophon contains a prayer that whoever shall hold the book in his hand may remember the writer, Columba, who wrote this Gospel in the space of twelve days. There were many Columbas besides the Saint, and it is pretty certain that the present book was not written by Saint Columba. It is morally certain also that it was not written in twelve days. But there is good reason to believe that the scribe has merely copied the colophon from the book he was transcribing,[120] and if so, the archetype may have been written by Saint Columba, who has the reputation of being a scribe.