I have dwelt thus in detail upon these Greek pictorial and decorative features, because there can be no doubt that the exportation of books so adorned, by the early missionaries, who carried Christianity and a degree of civilization to the Northern and Western countries, supplied the original types from which, however barbaric the imitations, the first attempts were made to rival, in the extreme West, the arts and spiritual graces of the East. On this plea, I hope I may be pardoned for dwelling yet further upon some of the leading distinctions between the Byzantine and Latin (that is, between the Eastern and Western) modes of working out religious conceptions, which were, that in the Western or Latin mode symbolism was universal; the art of the Catacombs was followed distinctly, though frequently remotely, developing itself in mythical and sentimental forms, and systems of parallelism between type and prototype. In the Greek Church, the exposition of faith, through art, took a more tangible form. Symbolism was avoided on all possible occasions, and the direct representation of sacred themes led to a partial transfer to the representation of the adoration due to the thing represented. Iconoclasm was the reaction to this abuse. In the advanced periods of Greek art, this realistic tendency led to a painful view of the nature of religion, more particularly in connection with the martyrdom of saints, and the physical sufferings of our Saviour and his followers, which are frequently represented in the most positive and repellent forms. Long, however, before Byzantine Art had time to deviate much from its ancient traditions, and even while it maintained an easy supremacy over the Western empire, the Lombard kingdom, and all the Visi- and Moeso-Gothic and Frankish races, a formidable competitor for the leadership in the Art of Illumination had sprung up in the extreme West, in the island homes of the Celtic races. It is not necessary now to prove, what historians have freely admitted, that Ireland was certainly christianized for a long time previous to the date of the mission of Augustine to England. The disputes which arose between the followers of that saint and the Irish priests, so soon as they clearly apprehended the nature of the supremacy claimed by the Church of Rome, assure us of their early isolation in the Christian world. Even in their, at first entire, and ultimately partial, rejection of the Vulgate text of the Gospels, and their retention of the older versions, from which no doubt their formulas of faith were derived, they steadily maintained their Ecclesiastical freedom from the dogmatism of Rome. As their creed was independent, so was their Art original; nothing resembling it can be traced previous to it.