who in his life of that great saint says: "His passion for studying the Scriptures was most intense, when the other parts of ministerial duty allowed him to indulge it. Thus we find him sometimes engaged for whole days and nights in exploring dark and difficult passages of Scripture, and accompanying his study and application with prayer and fasting" (_Life, etc._, by J. Smith, pag. 113). It was in the Latin version that all these saints usually meditated on the heavenly truths, and Bede does not hesitate to say that, though the Irish, Britons, Picts, and Angles had their own peculiar languages, yet, "by the meditation of the Scriptures", the Latin tongue became common to them all (_Hist. Eccl._, lib. i. cap. i.). How many noble monuments, too, remain to attest, at the same time, the artistic taste and the devotion of our Catholic fathers, in adorning and illustrating the books of Holy Writ! The _Domhnach Airgid_ is well known to the students of Irish Ecclesiastical antiquities; it is a MS. copy of the Latin text of the Gospels, described by Petrie as "perhaps the oldest copy of the Sacred Word now existing" (_Trans. R. I. A._ xviii. _Antiq._, pag. 17), and which, as Eugene Curry adds, "we have just reason to believe, was the companion in his hours of devotion of our Patron Saint, the apostle Saint Patrick" (_Lect._, pag. 321). This venerable text is encased in three distinct covers, the first or inner one being of yew, and probably coeval with the manuscript itself; the second of copper plated with silver whose interlaced ornaments indicate a period between the sixth and twelfth centuries; whilst the third or outer one, of the fourteenth century, is of silver plated with gold, being decorated with relievos of the crucifixion, of the Blessed Virgin, and the other Patrons of Ireland. Thus are all the ages of faith in our island, anterior to the Reformation, linked together in a holy union, to proclaim with one accord the love and devotion of our Catholic fathers for the inspired text. The _Cathach_, or vellum Book of Psalms, handed down from St. Columbkille, with its rich case of solid silver, is scarcely less interesting; and what shall we say of the Book of Kells, _i.e._, the Latin Gospels of St. Columba, "a manuscript (as Petrie remarks) which for beauty and splendour is not surpassed by any of its age known to exist" (_Round Towers_, pag. 203), and of which Westwood thus writes: "Ireland may justly be proud of the Book of Kells: it is unquestionably the most elaborately executed MS. of early art now in existence" (_Palaeog. Sac._). Besides these, there are _Dimma's Book_ and the _Gospels_ of MacDurnan, the _Psalter_ of St. Ricemarch, the _Evangeliarium_ of St. Moling, Bishop of Ferns, and the fragments of several Gospels, rivalling in point of ornament and accuracy the most precious MSS. of the Continent (_Ibid._). There is one copy of the sacred text which it is sad to miss from the collections of our Christian antiquities.