210 THE RIGHT REV. BISHOP G. FORREST BROWNE, D.D.. OS 



The chair is covered with examples of the vine-scroU; and its 

 two front uprights may weU have suggested the actual shape 

 of the very graceful shaft at Bewcastle. Our earliest Christian 

 art was no doubt brought to us bv Benedict Biscop and by 

 Wilfrith in the second generation of our Christian existence ; 

 and Wilfrith, who travelled his dioceses with a company of 

 persons, including masons, no doubt set up altars and stone 

 crosses at places where he preached the Gospel to our pagan 

 ancestors, where the itinerant priests would come from time to 

 time to celebrate the sacraments ; and his masons ornamented 

 them with patterns from Italy, 



The High CVosses of Ireland are less graceful in form and less 

 early in date than the corresponding monuments in the northern 

 parts of England. They are much more numerous, as are also 

 the tombstones. This is mainly due to two far-reaching facts. 

 Ireland has not been conquered, as Anglo-Saxon England was, 

 by a dominant race which threw down the religious monuments 

 as the work of a superstitious people, and built solid churches 

 on the sites of unsubstantial places of worship, burying in their 

 foundations the great crosses they had smashed. And Ireland 

 has not suffered from the universal occupation of ancient sites 

 for agricultural and residential purposes. Such vast collections 

 of sculptured stones and tombstones as the Irish have at Clon- 

 macnois have no parallel remaining in England. Another 

 reason for the preservation of the High Crosses has been put 

 forward — ^they are so massive that it would be a serious task 

 to smash them. Ireland had one finely aspiring shaft, the 

 CVoss of Tuam. It is broken in pieces. 



The ornamentation of the Irish crosses has its panels of 

 interlacements, as the English crosses have, but the main 

 feature is the crowding into panels as many human figures as 

 the artist can fit into the space (much as their manuscript 

 treasure, the Book of Kells, is spoiled). There is no indication 

 of a love like that of the Angles for the endless developments 

 of the arabesques of the tree of life. 



Inscriptions on the High Crosses are no part of the purpose 

 of their erection or their ornamentation. We have not the 

 interesting details of the Anglian tombstones. The Ogam script, 

 with which we deal in the Caledonian part of our consideration, 

 exists in greater abundance in Ireland than in all other parts 

 of these islands put together, and was no doubt borrowed from 

 Ireland when it is used elsewhere. But we do not find it in 



