people; but when the neighbouring land was taken from the monks of Wilten, who had had it ever since the days of the penitent giant Haymon, it ceased to be remembered.

Starting from Innsbruck again in a southerly direction, a little beyond Wilten, already described,* Berg Isel is reached; though invaded in part by the railway, it is still a worthy bourne of pilgrimage, by reason of the three heroic victories of the patriots under Hofer. On Sunday and holiday afternoons, parties of Innsbruckers may always be found refreshing these memories of their traditional prowess. It is also precious on less frequented occasions for the splendid view it affords of the whole Innthal. Two columns in the Schiess-stand record the honours of the 13th of April, 29th of May, and 13th of August, 1809, with the inscription, Donec erunt montes et saxa, et pectora nostra Austriaca domni mania semper erunt.' I must confess, however, that the noise of the perpetual rifle-practice is a great vexation, and prevents one from preserving an unruffled memory of the patriotism of which it is the exponent; but this holds good all over Germany. Here, on the 29th of May, fell Graf Johan v. Stachelburg, the last of his noble family, a martyr to his country's cause. The peasants among whom he was fighting begged him not to expose his life so recklessly, but he would not listen; 'I shall die but once,' he replied to all their warnings; 'and where could it befall me better than when fighting for the cause of God and Austria?' He was mortally wounded, and carried in a litter improvised from the brushwood around to Mutters, where he lies buried. A little beyond the southern incline of Berg Isel, a path strikes out to the right, and ascends the heights to the two villages of Natters and Mutters, the people of which were only in 1786 released from the obligation of going to Wilten for their Mass of obligation. Natters has some remains of one of Archduke Sigismund's high-perched huntingseats, named Waidburg; he also instituted in 1466 a foundation for saying five Masses weekly in its chapel.

There are several picturesque mountain walks to be found in the neighbourhood, under the grandly towering Nockspitze; and from either Mutters or Natters there is a path leading down to Götzens, Birgitz, Axams, and Grintzens, across westwards to the southern end of the Selrainthal. Götzens, † like the Hundskapelle, received its name for having retained its heathen worship longer than the rest of the district around; the ruins, which you see on a detached peak as you leave Götzens again, are the two towers of Liebenberger and Vellenberger, the poor remains of Schloss Völlenberg, the seat of an ancient Tirolean family of that name, who were very powerful in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It fell in to the Crown during the reign of Friedrich mit der Leeren Tasche, by the death of its last male heir. Frederick converted it into a state-prison. The noblest person it ever harboured was the poet Oswald von Wolkenstein, himself a knight of *See Part X., vol. viii. p. 596-8. † From Götze, an idol.

noble lineage; he had been inclined in the early part of Frederick's reign to join his influence with the rest of the nobility against him, because he took alarm at his familiarity with the common people. Frederick's sudden establishment of his power, and the energetic proceedings he immediately adopted for consolidating it, took many by surprise, Oswald von Wolkenstein among the rest. He was a bard of too sweet song, however, to be shut up in a cage, and Friedl was not the man to keep the minstrel in durance when it was safe to let him be at large. He had no sooner established himself firmly on the throne, than he not only released the poet, but forgetting all cause of animosity against him, placed him at his court, and delighted his leisure hours with listening to his warbling. Oswald's wild and adventurous career had stored his mind with such subjects as the Friedl would love to hear sung. But we shall have more to say of Oswald when we come to his home in the Grödnerthal.

The next village is Birgitz; and the next, after crossing the torrent which rushes down from the Alpe Lizum, is Axams, one of the most ancient in the neighbourhood, after passing the opening to the lonesome but richly pastured Sendersthal, the slopes of which meet those of the Selrainthal.

(To be continued.)

R. H. B.

HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF ILLUMINATION.

(IN SIX PARTS.)

PART V.-ANGLO-CELTIC ILLUMINATION.

WHATEVER uncertainty there may be regarding the period in which Christianity was first preached in Ireland, there is no doubt that in the fifth century St. Patrick was the true founder of a Christian Church among the Celtic barbarians, and that by him were sown the seeds of which the harvest in the succeeding century was so rich in saints and missionaries, as to win for the almost unknown little island the distinctive name of the Island of Saints. It is a peculiarity of Irish Christianity in those early centuries, that it consisted almost entirely of great monastic institutions; and that the ascetic side of Catholicism seems to have won the hearts of the wild lawless Celts far more than its tenderness and love. Monasticism seems to have been an established thing in Ireland by the latter end of the sixth century, though in a peculiar form. The ties of clanship were strong; and the first large monasteries were but portions of the clans, who, following perhaps the example of a chief, had chosen a conventual life, and were organized into something like a disciplined monastic life. Thus it came to pass

that sometimes a whole population would embrace monastic life, and consequently that a vast number of writers and painters were trained in the service of the Church. And the numerous missionaries, who travelled and preached the Gospel all over Europe, had almost all been trained in these primitive monasteries.

St. Columba, the 'Apostle of Caledonia,' as he is called, founded one of the first great monasteries of Ireland, having torn himself away from ties of kindred and native land, and thinking that he could serve God better on the bleak and lonely shores of the little island of Iona. There, it is said, after toiling in the day-time to cultivate the soil, he spent all the rest of his time not necessary for sleep, in transcribing the Holy Books. In this labour of love he continued till the last days of his life, and three hundred copies of the Gospels are attributed to him. Columba had, it is said, a peculiar passion for fine MSS.; and a story is recorded of a visit which he paid to a hermit, of whose collection of books Columba had heard. The hermit refused to let him copy any of his books, on which the fiery Columba cursed him in these words— "May thy books no longer do thee any good, neither to thee nor to those who come after thee, since thou takest occasion by them to shew thy inhospitality.' After his death, says the legend, his books became unintelligible to any reader. Of the same St. Columba there is another and more authentic legend. While on a visit to his old master, the Abbot Finnian, he shut himself up by stealth at night in the church, in order to make a hurried copy of the abbot's Psalter. Finnian found it out through a wanderer who had been attracted by the strange light, and angrily claimed the copy made without his leave. Columba refused to give it up, on which King Diarmid was appealed to, and Columba was required to give up the MS. This book still exists. It belongs to the O'Donnell clan, and for more than a thousand years was carried by them to battle as a talisman; but only one free from mortal sin was allowed to bear the precious relic.

The singular style of ornamentation known as the Celtic was indigenous to Ireland, and was for several centuries free from foreign influence. Here are a few of its peculiarities.

1. Narrow ribbons of colour, plaited, and twisting in and out in an endless variety of patterns.

2. A wonderful variety of birds and animals, hideously attenuated, and coiled one within another; their tails, tongues, and top-knots, forming long narrow ribbons, which again interlace.

3. A series of lines, forming varieties of Chinese-like patterns. This curious style of ornament was executed generally with a delicacy and precision of hand, and with a versatility of design and arrangement quite wonderful in such a barbarous condition of art. Mr. Ruskin somewhere notices the peculiar love which the human eye has for interwoven mysteries of pattern. From the rude architecture of the Egyptians, down to the braided capitals of the incomparable Venetian

palaces, we find tokens of the same delight in this, the simplest of all forms which the early art of nations has taken. Possibly the Celtic Art originated in remote ages, in the imitation of some such ancient carvings with which they had come in contact; and so, possessing great mechanical skill and power of design, and but little share of the powers of thought, it grew into a national style. The strange and hideous monsters, which form such an essential part of the decoration, tend to prove the great age of Celtic Art, being no doubt the expression of the wild faith of their ancestors, and shewing the prominence which the weird heathen legends had in the minds of the half-barbarous though Christianized, Irish. This power of design among the Celts was associated with the grossest ignorance and barbarity of drawing, as regards natural objects. There is not the slightest attempt to express any emotion or character in the faces, which are uniformly hideous, and remind one more of Hindoo idols than anything else. The 'symmetrical angel,' which Mr. Ruskin has described and drawn in one of his books as a contrast to the rude life of early Lombard Art, is a fair type of the complacent way in which the human face is constantly treated in Celtic Art. This angel is drawn in the form of a pyramid, the perfectly round head surmounting it, and the face having two perfectly round eyes and a nose; the whole surrounded with red dots. Mr. Ruskin's comment on it is as follows: 'You see the characteristics of this utterly dead school are-first, the wilful closing of the eyes to natural facts; for, however ignorant a person may be, he need only look at a human being to see that it has a mouth as well as eyes and secondly, the endeavour to adorn or idealize natural fact according to its own notions; it puts red spots in the middle of the hands, and sharpens the thumbs, thinking to improve them.' This is a barbarism quite hopeless, and out of it no living art could possibly arise. The condition of life is growth, and the art of ancient Ireland is a proof that great mechanical skill and singular power of design may exist side by side with utter vacuity of thought and feeling. The experience of centuries in the modern history of India and China has shewn how hopelessly paralyzed may become the art of nations, possessing the gifts of design and colour in a very singular degree, yet refusing to express a natural fact, or to teach a moral truth.

The most remarkable Celtic MS. remaining at this day is the celebrated book of Kells, which is supposed to have belonged to St. Columba, or Columbkille, as he is sometimes called, and from whom probably the book derived its name. The old Irish tradition said that it was written by angels, so miraculous did the intricacy of the ornament seem to the simple-minded Celts. Mr. Digby Wyatt observes, that having made several attempts, he found it impossible to reproduce an exact copy of one of the curious borders in this book.

The style of the Celtic MSS. was probably first carried into the Continent by the Irish monks of the seventh century, and introduced

into the monasteries which they founded there in various places. From thence it gradually spread through all the European schools of Illumination, and was in a greater or less degree adopted by them all.

Very little is known of the primitive art of England after the departure of the Romans until the mission of St. Augustine. No doubt the Romans, who left such vast memorials of their superior cultivation on the outward surface of the country during their four hundred years sojourn, must have bequeathed some of their knowledge and skill to the Britons. But whatever their influence might have been, the Saxon invasion effaced the traces of it to a very great extent. It has often been disputed whether the Saxons brought with them their own style of writing, or whether, on settling in England, they adopted the method which they found there. The opinion that they possessed a complete alphabet of their own is generally held at the present day; which alphabet became mingled after a time with the Anglo-Roman letters, and formed the character known as Anglo-Saxon. Astle thinks that writing was very little practised in England until after St. Augustine's mission in the end of the sixth century: it seems probable, therefore, that the Irish missionaries of the seventh century first introduced illuminated writing into England; for it is to that period that the earliest existing MSS. belong, and they closely resemble Celtic MSS. of the same date. This similarity, however, only belongs to the earliest examples of English Illumination. For, like the Gothic hordes which swept over southern Europe, the Saxon tribes brought with them the elements of a vigorous intellectual life, which, though as yet only in the germ, expanded under the influences of Christianity, and gave fresh life to the barbarous British Art. The mission of St. Augustine was perhaps the chief cause of the rapid development of Illumination in England; for many Anglo-Saxon MSS. bear token of having been the production of more than one hand-the borders being evidently the work of native artists, while the figures seem to have been painted by more experienced hands.

The Psalter of King Athelstane, which was executed early in the eighth century, is one of the earliest Saxon MSS. in which we may perceive a more advanced degree of knowledge. Possibly the figures may have been copied from a foreign book, for some of the sacred subjects are represented in the traditional manner of the Roman Church. In early British MSS., drapery is usually expressed by stripes of different colours, which by their waving lines indicate the form of the folds. In time the idea of drapery was developed into the peculiar 'fluttering' outlines, which were characteristic of early English Illumination, and were such a contrast to the conventional yet graceful folds of the foreign schools.

The invasions of the Danes and the Norman Conquest hindered the progress of Art in England for many years. To the destruction of libraries and pillaging of monasteries the Saxon Chronicle bears mournful