There are fine examples of the same school of Art in English Libraries, especially the _Book of Lindisfarne_, in the British Museum; the _Book of St. Chad_, in Lichfield, the writing in which is extremely like that in the _Book of Kells_; the _Gospels of MacRegol_, in the Bodleian; and the _Gospels of MacDurnan_, in Lambeth. Of these Irish and Hiberno-Saxon works Dr. Wangen says:--“The ornamental pages, borders, and initial letters exhibit such a rich variety of beautiful and peculiar designs, so admirable a taste in the arrangement of the colours, and such an uncommon perfection of finish, that one feels absolutely struck with amazement.” None of these, however, equals the _Book of Kells_ in the number, the fulness, or the perfection of detail of the great pictorial pages, while the prodigality with which ornament is bestowed on every page and every paragraph is a feature peculiar to it. There is nothing in the _Book of Kells_ itself to indicate its date, the last leaf--which may have contained the name of the scribe--being lost. The _Book of Lindisfarne_ contains a note (of the tenth century) naming the scribe and the illuminator, the former being Eadfrith, Bishop of Lindisfarne (died 721), and the latter his successor in the See, Aethelwald (died 737 or 740). MacRiagoil, scribe, and Abbot of Birr (King’s County), died in 820. The _Gospels of MacDurnan_ appear from the character of the writing to be coeval with the _Book of Armagh_, which is known to have been written in 807. From a comparison of the _Book of Kells_ with these MSS., it may be inferred that it belongs to the eighth century. The volume was anciently enclosed in a golden cover, and the _Annals of the Four Masters_ record, under the year 1006, that in that year it was stolen from the Church of Kells, and was found after twenty nights and two months with its gold stolen off and a sod over it. It is in that passage called the great Gospel of Columbkille--_i.e._, St. Columba. It owes that name, probably, to its connection with Columba’s Monastery at Kells, where, no doubt, it was written, and where it remained until the dissolution of the monasteries. From Richard Plunket, the last Abbot, it passed to one Gerald Plunket, and from him to Ussher.