We lastly have to consider the parts played in the development of early Christian art in Great Britain by the Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian invaders. There does not seem to be much evidence to show that the Saxons were ever gifted with any great capacity for ornamental design, although their workmanship often reached a high pitch of excellence. In looking through the plates of the most recent work on _The Industrial Arts of the Anglo-Saxons_, by the Baron J. de Baye, one is struck with the extremely limited range of imagination displayed in the design of the patterns. Interlaced-work (but of a debased kind) occurs on some of the sword-hilts and buckles, the latter evidently bearing a remarkable affinity to the Merovingian buckles. A radiated fibula found at Searby, in Lincolnshire, exhibits a diagonal key-pattern similar to that found in the Irish MSS. Far the most beautiful specimens of Saxon jewellery, however, are the circular brooches with _cloisonné_ ornament. The disc-shaped surface of these brooches is broken up into little compartments, which are filled in with thin slabs of coloured glass, garnets, etc. The narrow bands of gold which separate the compartments from each other are zigzagged at right angles, or stepped, and it is quite possible that the idea of the stepped patterns within circles, which occur in the decoration of the Irish MSS. and on the circular enamelled bosses on the Irish ecclesiastical metalwork, may have been taken from the circular _cloisonné_ Saxon brooch. It is only fair, however, to mention that circular ornaments of _cloisonné_ enamel, with an approximation to a stepped-pattern, are used in the decoration of the magnificent Late-Celtic shield found in the Thames at Battersea, and now in the British Museum. It has been suggested that Irish interlaced-work was derived from the rude interlaced patterns on the Saxon and Merovingian buckles, but this appears to me most unlikely. M. Paul du Chaillu, in his _Viking Age_, has endeavoured to show that the Anglo-Saxons derived their art such as it is from Northern rather than from Central or from Western Europe; but his views will not receive favour at the hands of the scientific archæologist who relies on hard facts to make good his contentions. The forms and ornamental details of the buckles and other objects found with Saxon burials in the south of England undoubtedly show more affinity with Merovingian grave-goods than with anything emanating from Norway, Sweden, or Denmark.