a suspicion of the existence of an ancient school of art in Ireland." The monks of Iona, under the great Irish saint and scribe Columba, or Columbkill, and their Anglo-Saxon disciples at Lindisfarne, under his friend St. Aidan, together with the Irish monks at Glastonbury, spread Celtic ornament in England, from whence it had, to a great extent, retired with the expulsion of the ancient British. St. Boniface, the principal awakener of Germany to Christianity, carried with him his singularly-ornamented book of Gospels, which is still preserved as a relic at Fulda. Similar evidence of the transmission of the Art prevalent during the early centuries of the Church in Ireland, to other lands, by means of the missionaries who left her shores, is to be found in the books of St. Kilian, the apostle of Franconia, still preserved at Wurtzburg; in those of St. Gall, now in the public library of St. Gall, in the canton of Switzerland which still bears his name; and in the very important series, of which Muratori has given an interesting catalogue, connected with the monastic institution founded by St. Columbanus, at Bobbio, in Italy, and now principally in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. Many of these pious men were themselves scribes, and their autograph copies of the Holy Gospels are still in existence, with the name of the writers, in some cases, identifying the volumes, and absolutely fixing their date. Thus we have the Gospels of St. Columba, the Leabhar Dhimma, or Gospels of St. Dhimma MacNathi, and the MacRegol Gospels in the Bodleian Library. All of these are anterior to the 9th century, and are distinguished by an elaborate style of ornament unlike any other European type. The extent of influence exercised by these eminent men and the "Episcopi Vagantes," or missionaries, is strongly insisted upon by M. Libri, unquestionably one of the most eminent and correctly-informed bibliographers of the present day. Speaking of the latitudinarianism of some among these Christian men, he observes, "No doubt certain pious but narrow minds hoped to open the door to ecclesiastical literature only; but the exclusion sometimes pronounced against the classics was never general amongst writers who, even in their rudeness, always showed themselves imitators of antiquity. Thus we find that the celebrated manuscript of Livy, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, belonged to Sutbert, an Irish monk, one of those wandering bishops who, towards the close of the seventh century, had gone to preach Christianity, and, as it would seem also, to teach Roman history in Belgium. One cannot help remarking, that the most celebrated of these pious missionaries, St. Columbanus, laid the foundations at Luxeuil in France, at St. Gall in Switzerland, and at Bobbio in Italy, of three monasteries which afterwards became famous for their admirable manuscripts, in many of which the influence of the Irish and Anglo-Saxon schools can be recognized at a glance. The library of St.