in St. Ciaran's time, before the year 548,—or over thirteen centuries ago.
Let me here interpolate a word about the artistic production of these and other ancient Irish books. With reference to the execution of the lettering and decoration, Mr. Digby Wyatt observes that in delicacy of handling and minute but faultless execution, the whole range of palaeography offers nothing equal to the early Irish manuscripts, especially "The Book of Kells," the most marvellous of them all. One cannot wonder, therefore, that Giraldus Cambrensis, when living in Ireland, in the reign of Henry II., on being shown an illustrated Irish manuscript, exclaimed; "This is more like the work of angels than of men."
Sir William Wilde, himself a Protestant, writing of the destruction of Irish art ("Sketches of the Irish Past"), says:—
"The gorgeous missals and illuminated gospels, instinct with life, genius, holy reverence, and patient love, were destined to be replaced soon after by the dull mechanism of print; while Protestantism used all its new-found strength to destroy that innate tendency of our nature, which seeks to manifest religious fervor, faith, and zeal by costly offerings and sacrifices. The golden-bordered holy-books, the sculptured crosses, the jewelled shrines, were crushed under the feet of Cromwell's troopers; the majestic and beautiful abbeys were desecrated and cast down to ruin, while beside them rose the mean and ugly structures of the reformed faith. . . . Since that mournful period there has been no revival of art in Ireland.
