unrivalled, throned in its own land, in its own natural surroundings.  The shrines and gospels, the reliquaries and missals, the crosses and bells that are still existent, many in Ireland, others in every country in the world, attest beyond any dispute that Irish art-workers held a preeminent place in the early middle ages, and that works of Irish art are still treasured as unique in their day and time.  No country has been plundered and desolated as Ireland has been.  Dane, Norman, English—­each in turn swept across the fair face of Ireland, carrying destruction in their train, yet withal Ireland has her art treasures and her ruins that bear favorable comparison with those of other civilizations.

In Dublin and in many private Irish collections can be found hand-written books of parchment, illuminated with glowing colors that time has scarce affected or the years caused to fade.  On one page alone of the Book of Kells, ornament and writing can be seen penned and painted in lines too numerous even to count.  They are there by the thousand:  a magnifying glass is required to reveal even a fragment of them.  Ireland produced these in endless number—­every great library or collection in Europe possesses one or more examples.

As with books, so with reliquaries, crosses, and bells.  When the Island of Saints and Scholars could produce books, it could make shrines and everything necessary to stimulate and hand down the piety and the patient skill of a people steeped in art-craft and religious feeling.  What they could do on parchment—­like the Books of Kells and Durrow—­what they could produce in bronze and precious metals—­like the Cross of Cong, the Shrine of Saint Patrick’s Bell, the Tara Brooch, and the Chalice of Ardagh—­not to write of the numberless bronze and gold articles of an age centuries long preceding their production—­they could certainly vie with in stone.

Of this earlier work a word must go down.  In Ireland still at the present day, after all the years of plunder she has undergone, more ancient gold art-treasures remain than in any other country, museum, or collection, most of them pre-Christian, and what the other countries do possess are largely Irish or of Celtic origin.  We must have this borne into the minds of every one of Irish birth or origin, that this great treasure was battered into shape by Irish hands on Irish anvils, designed in Irish studios, ornamented with Irish skill for Irish use.

With such workmen, having such instincts and training, what of the housing and surroundings to contain them and give them a fit and suitable setting?  The earliest stone structures in Ireland still remaining are the great stone cashels or circular walls enclosing large spaces—­walls of great thickness, unmortared, in which there are vast quantities of masonry.  Around their summits a chariot might be driven, inside their spaces horse races might be run.  As a few examples, there are Staigue, in Kerry; Dun Angus, in