320 



Mr. PETEIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



tinuation is, I have no doubt, the fact. But I have felt it difficult, if not 

 impossible, to resist the impression that buildings which exhibit a class of 

 ornaments, that differ in a remarkable degree from those usually seen on the 

 Norman buildings in England, but which have a perfect similarity to those 

 found in our illuminated manuscripts, jewelled reliquaries, sculptured stone 

 crosses, inscribed tombstones, and, indeed, in every ecclesiastical monument of 

 antiquity preserved to us, of ages prior to the period of the Norman Conquest 

 of England, must, in some instances, be cotemporaneous with those monuments. 

 Of this similarity of ornament a thousand evidences might be adduced from 

 the various classes of remains to which I have alluded, but I shall content 

 myself with a notice of a few of the more striking examples of the characteristic 

 ornaments found on those monuments, as well as on our ecclesiastical buildings. 



* ^^- > -- > *- > ^*^-- ^ ^^ ^ 





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Of these, one of the most general and remarkable is that curious triangular 

 figure, known among medallists by the name of triquetra, and which is formed 

 by the ingenious interlacing of a single cord or line. In the creation of varieties, 

 almost endless, of this figure, the Irish ceards, or artificers, as well as the 

 scribes, found an ample field for the exercise of their fancy in design, as will 

 sufficiently appear from the first of the prefixed illustrations, which represent two 

 of the bosses of an ancient crozier in my own cabinet, the crozier of the virgin 



