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cimens in this country, one of the very finest of which is in the 
collection of the College of St. Columba. You have several 
of them in the cases in the next room; and perhaps there is 
in all Europe no more striking one than an implement of un- 
known use in the possession of our great archzological master, 
Dr. Petrie. For beauty of design and beauty of execution 
this may- challenge comparison with any specimen of cast 
bronze work that it has ever been my fortune to see. I have 
been able to notice but a few transcendant specimens; but 
works of this kind are far from rare. Although they began early 
—earlier than the intercourse of Rome with these islands— 
they continued late; and to the last moment of real, unmixed 
Keltic art, this is its great and distinguishing characteristic. 
It deals with curves, which are not arcs of a circle; the com- 
binations which form its exquisite curved outlines are derived 
from the ellipse; its figures are not of the class we usually 
designate by the term geometrical. And, above all, it calls 
in the aid of enamel to perfect its work,—enamel, Gentlemen, 
not cloisonné, like the enamel of the East; no mosaic work of 
tesseree, like so many so-called enamels of the Romans, but 
enamel, champlevé, as Philostratus described the barbarians, 
év 7» wxedvy, the island-barbarians to have invented it. The 
Goodrich Court shield is ornamented with enamel—champlevé 
enamel, on its bronze baze. Many of your horse-trappings 
are so; more are so in England; and it is possible that the 
Britanno-Keltic art affected this mode of ornament more than 
the Scoto-Keltic. But let me remind you that this brilliant 
ornamentation of horse-furniture is distinctly noted by Pliny 
as a characteristic feature of Keltic art. ‘The specimens that 
we have from Yorkshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Somersetshire, 
Surrey, from Scotland, from this island, prove its wide dis- 
persion, and justify the observations of the Roman admiral 
and philosopher. These are, in truth, the great characteristic 
differences to which I would, above all things, direct your at- 
tention. ‘The engraved spiral line, with double winding, is 
