It was indeed among their own people, the Celts of Ireland and of the

Irish colony in the west of Scotland, that the reign of these saints was

absolute. But if we count this ecclesiastical influence a feature of the

Celtic nation, either the Welsh must not be counted as Celts, or they

must be looked on as exceptions from this spiritual dominion. They were

the people among whom, of all the tribes who inhabited Britain between

the days of Julius Cæsar and those of William of Normandy, it might

have been primarily expected that we would find the most vital

Christianity and the greatest missionary force. They professed to have

carried with them into their mountains the traditions and the

nationality of that very important portion of the Christianised Roman

Empire which was called Britannia. When the heart of the Empire became

paralysed, this branch, doubtless after a long harassing contest with

the Picts and the Irish of the north, was broken, and partly subjected,

partly driven away by the Saxons. That they should have failed, through

all their revolutions and calamities, to preserve any remnants of Roman

social habits, is not perhaps wonderful. But that they should have

failed to preserve enough of Christian influence to second and support

the missions sent to the Saxons, so soon after these had superseded the

British power, looks like an exception to the usual rule of Christian

progress. The Welsh antiquaries, through meritorious efforts, strive in

vain to establish the existence of Welsh ecclesiarchs during the time

when the countless saints of Ireland were swarming over Scotland and

penetrating into England. They point to a stone said to commemorate a

victory gained over the Picts and the Saxons by the Britons, not through

their courage or their skill in fight, but by the Halleluiahs raised by

two saints who were present in their host. These saints, however,

Garmon and Lupus, were, as Bede tells us, Frenchmen, missionaries from

the Gallican Church to correct the errors of the Britons. The venerable

Bede scolds these Britons roundly for not having kept up the faith

planted among them, and for not having been prepared to help Augustin

and his followers in the very hard task of converting the Saxons. It is

a pity that we do not know something more of Roman Christianity, and

indeed of Roman civilisation generally in Britain, before the Saxon

days. There appears to have been among the Romanised British Christians

little zeal and a good deal of controversy and dissent, and we hear a

great deal more of the influence of the Pelagian heresy among them than

of the influence of Christianity itself.

The scantiness of our acquaintance with Roman Christianity in Britain is

the more to be regretted, because it would have been very interesting to

compare its manifestations with those of the Church which found refuge

in the West during the dark days of Rome--the days when the temporal

empire was crushed, and the spiritual empire had not arisen. As we might

expect from the ecclesiastical conditions already noticed, the persons

who first exercise ecclesiastical authority in the two islands did not

derive their strength from any foreign hierarchy, and had no connection

with Rome. Any reference, indeed, to the influence of a Roman pontiff,

either actual or prospective, in the life of any of our early saints,

will prepare the critic for finding that the life has been written

centuries after the era of the saint, or has been tampered with. In

Adamnan's Life of Columba, Rome is mentioned once or twice as a very

great city, but there is no allusion throughout that remarkable

biography to any spiritual central authority exercised by the bishop

there over the presbyters in Scotland and Ireland. This is, of course,

nothing more than the statement of what the reader of a book has not

found in it. Any other reader may find allusions to the supremacy of the

popedom over these early Christian communities, if he can. But I think

he is likely to find none; and any one who desires to study the real

history of the rise and progress of the spiritual dominion of Rome

would, with more profit, take up the books and records referring to

events three or four hundred years after the age of Columba.

Self-sustained as they were, these isolated communities had a very

strong vitality. The picture exhibited in the hagiographies is truly the

reign of the saints. Their power was of an immediate, abrupt, and purely

despotic kind, which would have been neutralised or weakened by anything

like a central control. Prompt and blind obedience to the commands of

the saint-superior was the rule of Hy or Iona, and of all the other

religious communities of the West. Perhaps there were even here feuds,

disputes, and mutinies of which no record has been preserved. The

hagiographer can only commemorate those which were suppressed by some

terrible manifestation of Divine power, for the person whose life he

commemorates is only conventionally and nominally to be spoken of as a

mortal; he is in reality superhuman, wielding, whenever he pleases, the

thunderbolts of the Deity, annihilating dissent and disobedience to

himself, as if it were blasphemy in the Deity's own presence, and

crushing by an immediate miracle any effort to oppose his will, were it

even about the proper hour of setting off on a journey, or the dinner to

be ordered for the day.

The rank which those primitive clergy of Ireland and the Highlands

occupy is almost invariably that of the saint, a rank as far separated

from that which can be conferred by any human hierarchy as heaven is

from earth. They were, as we have seen, independent of Rome from the

beginning, and this great host of saints had lived and left their

biographies to the world long before the system of judicial

canonisation. How a boundary is professed to be drawn between the

genuine and the false among these saints of the North, cannot be easily

understood. No one seems to object to any of them as spurious. Many of

them are so very obscure that only faint and fragmentary traces of them

can be found, yet it seems never to be questioned that they occupied the

transcendent spiritual rank usually attributed to them. Of others

nothing is known but the bare name, yet it is never doubted that the

owner was entitled to his attribute of saint.

The brethren at Iona seem sometimes to have lived well, for we hear of

the killing of heifers and oxen. A pragmatical fellow declines to

participate in the meal permitted on the occasion of a relaxation of

discipline--the saint tells him that since he refuses good meat at a

time when he is permitted to have it, it is to be his doom to be one of

a band of robbers who will be glad to appease their hunger on putrid

horse-flesh. The ruling spirit, however, of this first Christian

mission, as we find it recorded, is undoubtedly asceticism. The

mortification of the flesh is the temporal source of spiritual power.

Some incidents occur which put this spirit in a shape bordering on the

ludicrous. A saint is at a loss to know how his power is waning. There

is some mysterious countervailing influence acting against him, which

manifests itself in the continued success of an irreverent king or

chief, whom he thought he had taken the proper spiritual methods to

humble. He at last discovers the mystery; the king had been _fasting_

against him--entering the field of asceticism with him, in short, and

not without success.

The biography of an Asiatic despot, so far as other persons are

concerned, is merely the history of his commands and their obedience. It

is only incidentally, therefore, that one is likely to acquire any

information from it about the people over whom he rules. In like manner,

the life of an Irish saint is the history of commanding and obeying; yet

a few glimpses of social life may be caught through occasional chinks.

The relation which the spiritual held towards the temporal powers is

sufficiently developed to give ground for considerable inquiry and

criticism. The more eminent of the saints had great influence in state

affairs, ruling in some measure the monarchs themselves. Some monarch is

occasionally mentioned as the friend of Columba, much as a bishop might

allude to this or that lay lord as among his personal friends. We find

him settling the succession of Aidan, the king of the Dalriadic Scots,

through an influence to which any opposition was utterly hopeless. Send

your sons to me, he says to Aidan, and God will show me who is to be

your successor. The sign falls on Eochoid Buidh, and the saint tells the

king that all his other sons will come to a premature end, and they drop

off accordingly, chiefly in battle. This power of fixing the evil eye,

of prophesying death, is found in perpetual use among the early saints.

It is their ultimate appeal in strife and contest, and their instrument

of vengeance when thwarted or affronted; and a terrible instrument it

must have been. Who could gainsay those believed to hold in their hands

the issues of life and death?

In our conception of the kings with whom these saints were familiar, it

may be well not to be misled by words. We shall realise them better at

the present day by looking to Madagascar or the Marquesas Islands than

among the states of Europe. The palace was a shanty of log or wattle,

protected, perhaps, by a rampart of earth or uncemented stones, and the

king had a stone chair with a few mystic decorations scratched on it,

which served for his throne on state occasions. The prospect of

acquiring a gold torque or a silver drinking-cup would have a material

influence over his imperial policy. Were we to believe the fabulous

historians, Ireland was for centuries a compact kingdom under one

imperial sovereign, who presided over subsidiary rulers in the

provinces. But although sometimes one provincial king was powerful

enough to keep the others in subjection, old Celtic Ireland never was a

kingdom, properly speaking, for it never had a nationality. Some people

maintain, not without reason, that the facility with which a nationality

resolves itself into existence depends much, not only on race, but on

geological conditions. The Celtic Irish seem to have always been too

busy with local feuds and rivalries to achieve any broad nationality.

And the nature of their country--a vast plain intersected by morasses

and rivers, and here and there edged with mountain ranges--is

unfavourable to the growth of a nationality, since it presents no

general centre of defence against a foreign enemy, like that great

central range of mountains in Scotland, which Columba's biographers call

the Dorsum Britanniæ--the Backbone of Britain. Ireland, indeed, seems to

have had no conception of a nationality until such a thing was suggested

by the Normans and the Saxons, after they had been long enough there to

feel patriotic. And so it has generally happened that any alarming

outbreaks against the imperial government have been led by people of

Norman or Saxon descent.

Still there is no doubt, difficult as it may be to realise the idea,

that at the times with which we are dealing, Ireland enjoyed a kind of

civilisation, which enabled its princes and its priests to look down on

Pictland, and even on Saxon England, as barbarian. The Roman dominion

had not penetrated among them, but the very remoteness which kept the

island beyond the boundaries of the Empire, also kept it beyond the

range of the destroyers of the Empire, and made it in reality the

repository of the vestiges of imperial civilisation in the north.

Perhaps the difference between the two grades of civilisation might be

about the same as we could have found ten years ago between Tahiti and

New Zealand.

An extensive and minute genealogical ramification, when it is authentic,

is a condition of a pretty far advanced state of civilisation.

Abandoning the old fabulous genealogies which went back among the

Biblical patriarchs, the rigid antiquaries of Ireland find their way

through authentic sources to genealogical connections of a truly

marvellous extent. Such illustrious men as the saints can, of course, be

easily traced, as all were proud to establish connection with them;

while Columba himself and several others were men of royal descent. But

of the casual persons mentioned in the Life of Columba, Dr Reeves hunts

out the genealogy--fully as successfully, one would say, as that of any

person of the country-gentleman class in Britain, living at the

beginning of this century, could be established. There are, indeed, many

characteristics in the hagiologic literature bearing an analogy to

modern social habits so close as to be almost ludicrous; and it is not

easy to deal with these conditions of a very distant age, brought to us

as they are through the vehicle of a language which is neither classical

nor vernacular, but conventional--the corrupt Latin in which the

biographers of the saints found it convenient to write. It would appear

that when he was in Ireland, St Columba kept his carriage, and the loss

of the lynch-pin on one occasion is connected with a notable miracle. Dr

Reeves, as appropriate to this, remarks that "the memoirs of St Patrick

in the Book of Armagh make frequent mention of his chariot, and even

name his driver." It is difficult to suppose such a vehicle ever

becoming available in Iona; but there Columba seems to have been

provided with abundance of vessels, and he could send for a friend, in

the way in which MacGillicallum's "carriage," in the form of a boat, was

sent for Johnson and Boswell.

There are many other things in these books which have a sound more

familiar to us than any sense which they really convey. Here the saint

blesses the store of a "homo plebeius cum uxore et filiis"--a poor man

with a wife and family--a term expressively known in this day among all

who have to deal with the condition of their fellow-men, from the

chancellor of the exchequer to the relieving-officer. In the same

chapter we are told "de quodam viro divite tenacissimo"--of a very

hard-fisted rich fellow--a term thoroughly significant in civilised

times. He is doomed, by the way, to become bankrupt, and fall into such

poverty that his offspring will be found dead in a ditch--a fate also

intelligible in the nineteenth century. In another place we have among

the saint's suitors "plebeius pauperrimus, qui in ea habitabat regione

quæ Stagni litoribus Aporici est contermina." The "Stagnum Aporicum" is

Lochaber; so here we have a pauper from the neighbourhood of Lochaber--a

designation which I take to be familiarly known at "the Board of

Supervision for the Relief of the Poor in Scotland." We are told, too,

of the saint being at a plebeian feast, and of a plebeius in the island

of Raghery quarrelling with his wife.

The thoughtful student will find a more distinguished analogy with the

habits of later civilisation in the literature of these early churchmen.

The subject of the introduction of letters into Ireland, and the very

early literature of that country, is too large to be handled here. It is

certain that in Columba's era, the middle of the sixth century, books

were written and used in Ireland. The respect paid to a book in that age

was something beyond that of the most ardent book-hunter. Many of the

most exciting of the saintly miracles have for their end the

preservation of a book in fire or in water. The custody of the Book of

Armagh, containing St Patrick's canons, was a great hereditary office;

and the princely munificence which provided the book with a suitable

case or shrine in the tenth century is recorded in Irish history.

Besides their costly shrines already referred to, these books often had

for an outer covering a bag or satchel, in which the sacred deposit was

carried from place to place. The heart must be dead to all natural

sensations that does not sympathise with Dr Reeves in the following

triumphant announcement:--

"Of leather cases the cover of the Book of Armagh is the most

interesting example now remaining. It came, together with its

inestimable enclosure, into the writer's possession at the end of 1853,

and is now lying before him. It is formed of a single piece of strong

leather, 36 inches long and 12 broad, folded in such a way as to form a

six-sided case 12 inches long, 12-3/4 broad, and 2-3/4 thick, having a

flap which doubles over in front, and is furnished with a rude lock and

eight staples, admitted through perforations in the flap, for short iron

rods to enter and meet at the lock. The whole outer surface, which has

become perfectly black from age, is covered with figures and

interlacings of the Irish pattern in relief, which appear to have been

produced by subjecting the leather, in a damp state, before it was

folded, to pressure upon a block of the whole size, having a depressed

pattern, and allowing it to remain until the impression became

indelible."

A pleasing peculiarity in the personal habits of these recluses is their

frequent communion with birds and the gentler kind of beasts. Their

legendary histories speak of these animals as apt mediums of

vaticination and miraculous intervention; but we must be content, in the

present age, to suppose that their frequent appearance, their familiar

intercourse with the saints, and the quaint and amiable incidents in

which they figure, are in reality characteristic memorials of the kindly

feelings and the innocent pursuits natural to men of gentle disposition

and retired life. Thus Columba one day gives directions to a brother to

be on the watch at a certain point in the island of Iona, for there, by

nine o'clock on that day, a certain stranger stork will alight and drop

down, utterly fatigued with her journey across the ocean. That stork the

brother is enjoined to take up gently, and convey to the nearest house,

and feed and tend for three days, after which she will take wing and fly

away to the sweet spot of her native Ireland, whence she had wandered.

And this the brother is to do because the bird is a guest from their own

beloved native land. The brother departs, and returns at the proper

time. Columba asks no questions--he knows what has taken place, and

commends the obedient piety of the brother who had sheltered and tended

the wanderer.

Another saint, Ailbhe, had a different kind of intercourse with certain

cranes. They went about in a large body, destroying the corn in the

neighbourhood, and would not be dispersed. The saint went and delivered

on oration to them on the unreasonableness of their conduct, and

forthwith, penitent and somewhat ashamed, they soared into the air and

went their way. "St Cuthbert's ducks" acquired a long celebrity. When

that reverenced ascetic went to take up his residence in the

wave-bounded solitude of the Farne Islands, he found the solan-geese

there imbued with the wild habits common to their storm-nurtured race,

and totally unconscious of the civilisation and refinement of their

kinsmen who graze on commons, and hiss at children and dogs. St

Cuthbert tamed them through his miraculous powers, and made them as

obedient and docile a flock as abbot ever ruled. The geese went before

him in regular platoons, following the word of command, and doing what

he ordered--whether it might be the most ordinary act of the feathered

biped, or some mighty miracle. Under his successors their conduct seems

to have been less regular, though certainly not less peculiar; for we

are told that they built their nests on the altar, and around the altar,

and in all the houses of the island; farther, that, during the

celebration of mass, they familiarly pecked the officiating priest and

his assistants with their bills. It is curious enough that the

miraculous education of these birds makes its appearance in a Scottish

legal or official document at the close of the fifteenth century. It is

an instrument recording an attestation to the enormous value of the down

of these renowned birds; and seems, indeed, to be an advertisement or

puff by merchants dealing in the ware, though its ponderous Latinity is

in curious contrast with the neat examples of that kind of literature to

which we are accustomed in these days.[82]

[Footnote 82: "Instrumentum super Aucis Sancti Cuthberti."--Spalding

Club.]

One of the prettiest of the stories about birds is divided between St

Serf, the founder of a monastery in Loch Leven, and St Kentigern, the

patron of Glasgow, where he is better known as St Mungo. Kentigern was

one among a parcel of neophyte boys whom the worthy old Serf, or

Servanus, was perfecting in the knowledge of the truth. Their teacher

had a feathered pet--"quædam avicula quæ vulgo ob ruborem corpusculi

rubisca nuncupatur"--a robin-redbreast, in fact, an animal whose good

fortune it is never to be mentioned without some kindly reference to his

universal popularity, and the decoration which renders him so easily

recognised wherever he appears. St Serf's robin was a wonderful bird; he

not only took food from his master's hand and pecked about him according

to the fashion of tame and familiar birds, but took a lively interest in

his devotions and studies by flapping his wings and crowing in his own

little way, so as to be a sort of chorus to the acts of the saint. The

old man enjoyed this extremely; and his biographer, with more geniality

than hagiographers usually show, sympathises with this innocent

recreation, applying the example of the bow that was not always bent, in

a manner suggestive of suspicions that he was not entirely unacquainted

with profane letters. One day, when the saint had retired to his

devotions, the boys amused themselves with his little pet; and a

struggle arising among them for its possession, the head was torn from

the body--altogether a natural incident. Thereupon, says the narrator,

fear was turned to grief, and the avenging birch--"plagas virgarum quæ

puerorum gravissima tormenta esse solent"--arose terribly in their

sight. It was at this moment that an unpopular pupil, named Kentigern--a

new boy, apparently--a stranger who had not taken in good-fellowship to

the rest of the school, but was addicted to solitary meditation, entered

the guilty conclave. Their course was taken--they threw the fragments of

the bird into his hands, and bolted. St Serf enters, and the crew are

awaiting in guilty exultation the bursting of his wrath. The consecrated

youth, however, fitting the severed parts to each other, signs the

cross, raises his pure hands to heaven, and breathes an appropriate

prayer--when lo! robin lifts his little head, expands his wings, and

hops away to meet his master. In the eucharistic office of St

Kentigern's day, this event, along with the restoration to life of a

meritorious cook, and other miracles, inspired a canticle which, for

long subsequent ages, was exultingly sung by the choristers in the

saint's own cathedral of Glasgow, thus:--

"Garrit ales pernecatus.

Cocus est resuscitatus.

Salit vervex trucidatus

Amputato capite."

A bird proper, on the shield argent of the city of Glasgow, has been

identified with the resuscitated pet of the patron saint. The tree on

which it is there perched is a commemoration of another of the saint's

miracles. In a time of frost and snow his enemies had extinguished his

fire; but immediately drawing on the miraculous resources ever at the

command of his class on such emergencies, he breathed fire into a frozen

branch from the forest; and it was centuries afterwards attested that

the green branches of that forest made excellent firewood.

Another element in the blazon of the Venice of the west is a fish, laid

across the stem of the tree, "in base," as the heralds say, but not, as

generally depicted, conformable either to their science or that of the

ichthyologist. This fish holds in its mouth something like a dish--in

reality a ring--and thus commemorates a miraculous feat of the same

saint, which has found its way into the romances of the juvenile portion

of the reading public, where it is a standard nuisance. Queen Cadyow,

whose conduct was of such a character that it is wonderful how any

respectable saint could have prevailed on himself to serve her, gives

her bridal ring to a paramour. Her husband lures the rival away to the

bank of the Clyde, to sleep after the fatigues of the chase, and there,

furtively removing the ring, pitches it into the river. The reader knows

the result by instinct. St Kentigern, appealed to, directs the first

salmon that can be caught in the Clyde to be opened, and there, of

course, is the ring in the stomach. This miracle is as common in the

"Acta Sanctorum" as in the juvenile romances. It served St Nathalan in

such a manner as to preclude the supposition that the saint had invoked

it on the occasion. He locked himself into iron chains, and threw their

key into the river Dee, in order that he might be unable to open the

fetterlock before he had made a pilgrimage to the tombs of St Peter and

St Paul; but the water did its duty, and restored the key in the stomach

of a fish.

We have naturally many fishing anecdotes connected with the northern

saints. Columba is described as out a-fishing one day with a parcel of

his disciples, who are characterised as "strenui piscatores," a term

which would be highly applicable to many a Waltonian of the present day.

The saint, desirous of affording them a pleasant surprise, directs them

to cast their net where a wonderful fish was prepared for them; and they

drag out an "esox" (whatever that may mean) of wonderful size.

Some of the inhabitants of the deep familiar to these saints were

animals of a formidable kind. Columba and a band of his disciples are

going to cross the river Ness, when they meet those who bear on their

shoulders the body of one who, endeavouring to swim across the same

river, had been bitten to death by a monster of the deep. The saint, in

the face of this gloomy procession, requires that one of his disciples

shall swim across the Ness, and bring over a boat which is on the other

side. A disciple named Mocumin, whom the saint had miraculously cured of

a bleeding of the nose, confident in the protecting power of his master,

pulls off all his clothes save his tunica (whatever that may be--coat,

kilt, or leathern shirt), and takes to the water. The monster, who is

reposing deep down in the stillness of the profoundest pool, hears the

stir of the water above, and is seen to rise with a splash on the

surface, and make with distended jaws for the swimmer. The saint, of

course, orders the beast back just at the moment when all seemed over,

and is instantly obeyed. The characteristics of the monster could not be

more closely identical with those of the crocodile or alligator, had the

incident been narrated in Egypt or America.

Adventures with such monsters in our northern waters supply many of the

triumphs attributed to the saints. St Colman of Drumore actually

extracted a young girl alive from the stomach of an "aquetalis bestia."

She had been swallowed while standing on the edge of a lake, "camisiam

suam lavantem"--washing her chemise, poor simple soul. St Molua saw a

monster, of the size of a large boat, in pursuit of two boys swimming

unconscious of danger in a lake in the county of Monaghan. He showed

good worldly sense and presence of mind on the occasion; for, instead of

alarming them with an announcement of their perilous condition, he

called out to them to try a race and see which would reach the bank

first. The beast, balked of his prey, took in good part an admonition by

the saint, and returned no more to frighten boys.

From fishes and aquatic monsters the law of association naturally leads

us to the waters themselves. There are throughout the United Kingdom

multitudes of wells, still bearing the names of the saints to whom they

were dedicated. The legends of miracles performed by their waters,

through the intercession of their special saints, are countless. It is,

perhaps, because cures effected by the use of waters may be accounted

for otherwise than by supernatural intervention, that modern writers of

the old faith speak with less reserve of the miracles at fountains than

of the others they have to record, and even bring them down to modern

times. Many of them may be found recorded in his usual slipshod manner

in the amiable pages of Butler--as, for instance, in the life of St

Winfrid (November 3), where we are told how "Roger Whetstone, a Quaker,

near Bromsgrove, by bathing at Holywell, was cured of an inveterate

lameness and palsy by which he was converted to the Catholic faith."

Some of the old saints' wells, remote from cities and advanced opinions,

are still haunted by people who believe them to be endowed with

supernatural healing virtues. It is in Romish Ireland, of course, that

this belief has its most legitimate seat; but even in the most

orthodoxly-Presbyterian districts of Scotland, a lingering dubious trust

in the healing virtues of sanctified fountains has given much perplexity

to the clergy.

Some of these fountains are in caverns, and if in any one of these the

well falls into a rude-hewn basin like a font, we may be sure that a

hermit frequented the cave, and that it was the place of worship of

early converts. Such a cave was the hiding-place, after the '45, of the

worthy single-minded Lord Pitsligo, no bad prototype of the Baron of

Bradwardine. It is entered by a small orifice like a fox's hole, in the

face of the rugged cliffs which front the German Ocean near Trouphead.

Gradually it rises to a noble arched cavern, at the end of which is the

font cut into the stone, where it would catch the outpourings of a small

spring. When I saw it long years ago, it was filled with clear living

water, which, save when it had been the frugal drink of the poor

Jacobite refugee, had probably been scarcely disturbed since the early

day when heathen men and women went thither to throw off their idolatry

and enter the pale of Christendom. The unnoticeable smallness of many of

these consecrated wells makes their very reminiscence and still

semi-sacred character all the more remarkable. The stranger in Ireland

or the Highlands of Scotland hears rumours of a distinguished well

miles on miles off. He thinks he will find an ancient edifice over it,

or some other conspicuous adjunct. Nothing of the kind--he has been

lured all that distance over rock and bog to see a tiny spring bubbling

out of the rock, such as he may see hundreds of in a tolerable walk any

day. Yet, if he search in old topographical authorities, he will find

that the little well has ever been an important feature of the

district--that, century after century, it has been unforgotten; and,

with diligence, he may perhaps trace it to some incident in the life of

the saint, dead more than 1200 years ago, whose name it bears.

Highlanders still make pilgrimages to drink the waters of such

fountains, which they judiciously mix with the other aqua to which they

are attached. They sometimes mimic the spirit of the old pilgrimage, by

leaving behind them an offering at the fountain. I have seen such

offerings by the brink of remote Highland springs, as well as in

Ireland. The market value of them would not afford an alarming estimate

of the intensity of the superstition still lingering in this form in the

land. The logic of the depositors probably suggests, that the spiritual

guardians of the fountain, though amenable to flattery and propitiation

by gift, are not really well informed about the market value of worldly

chattels, and are easily put off with rubbish.

A historical inquiry into the worship or consecration of wells and

other waters would be interesting. In countries near the tropics, where

sandy deserts prevail, a well must ever have been a thing of momentous

importance; and we find among the tribes of Israel the digging down a

well spoken of as the climax of reckless, heartless, and awful

destructiveness. To find, however, how in watery Ireland and Scotland a

mere dribblet of the element so generally abounding should have been an

object of veneration for centuries, we must look to something beyond

physical wants and their supply.

The principal cause of the sanctification of springs must, of course, be

explained by the first of Christian ordinances. The spring close by the

dwelling or cell of the saint--the spring on account of which he

probably selected the centre of his mission--had not only washed the

forefathers of the district from the stain of primeval heathenism, but

had applied the visible sign by which all, from generation to

generation, had been admitted into the bosom of the Church. This might

seem to afford a cause sufficient in itself for the effect, yet it

appears to have been aided by other causes more recondite and

mysterious. Notwithstanding all the trash talked about Druids and other

persons of this kind, we know extremely little of the heathenism of the

British Isles. The little that we do know is learned from the meagre

notices which the biographers of the saints have furnished of that

which the saints superseded. It is not their function to commemorate

the abominations of heathenism; they would rather bury it in eternal

oblivion--_premat nox alta_--but they cannot entirely tell the triumphs

of their spiritual heroes without some reference, however faint, to the

conquered enemies.

The earliest recorded conflicts between the new and the old creed are

connected with fountains. In one page of the Life of Columba we find the

saint, on a child being brought to him for baptism, in a desert place

where no water was, striking the rock like Moses, and drawing forth a

rill, which remained in perennial existence--a fountain surrounded by a

special sanctity. In the next page he deals with a well in the hands of

the Magi. They had put a demon of theirs into it to such effect, that

any unfortunate person washing himself in the well or drinking of its

water, was forthwith stricken with paralysis, or leprosy, or blindness

of an eye, or some other corporeal calamity. The malignant powers with

which they had inspired this formidable well spread far around the fear

of the Magi, and consequently their influence. But the Christian

missionaries were to show a power of a different kind--a power of

beneficence, excelling and destroying the power of malignity. The

process adopted is fully described. The saint, after a suitable

invocation, washed his hands and feet in the water, and then drank of it

with his disciples. The Magi looked on with a malignant smile to see

the accursed well produce its usual effect; but the saint and his

followers came away uninjured: the demon was driven out of the well, and

it became ever afterwards a holy fountain, curing many of their

infirmities. Another miracle, bearing against the Magi, introduces us to

one of their number by name, and gives a little of his domestic history.

His name is Broichan, and he is tutor to Brud, king of the Picts, with

whom he dwells on the banks of the Ness. It might have relieved the mind

of the historical inquirer to be told that Brud built for himself the

remarkable vitrified fort of Craig-Phadric, which rises high above the

Ness, and to be informed of the manner in which its calcined rampart was

constructed; but nothing is said on the subject, and Craig-Phadric

stands on its own isolated merits, still to be guessed at, without one

tangible word out of record or history to help any theory about its

object or construction home to a conclusion. One is free, however, to

imagine Brud, the heathen king of the Picts, living on the scarped top

of the hill, in a lodging of wattled or wooden houses, surrounded by a

rampart of stones fused by fire, as the only cement then known. Such we

may suppose to have been the "domus regia," whence the saint walked out

in a very bad humour to the river Ness, from the pebbles of which he

selected one white stone, to be turned to an important use. Broichan,

the Magus, had in his possession a female slave from Ireland. Columba,

who seems to have held with him such intercourse as a missionary to the

Chocktaws might have with a great medicine-man, desired that the Magus

should manumit the woman, for what reason we are not distinctly told;

but it is easy to suppose strong grounds for intervention when a

Christian missionary finds a woman, of his own country and creed, the

slave of a heathen priest. Columba's request was refused. Losing

patience, he had resort to threats; and at length, driven to his

ultimatum, he denounced death to Broichan if the slave were not released

before his own return to Ireland. Columba told his disciples to expect

two messengers to come from the king to tell of the sudden and critical

illness of Broichan. The messengers rushed in immediately after to claim

the saint's intervention. Broichan had been suddenly stricken by an

angel sent for the purpose; and as if he had been taking his dram in a

modern gin-palace, we are told that the drinking-glass, or glass

drinking-vessel, "vitrea bibera," which he was conveying to his lips,

was smashed in pieces, and he himself seized with deadly sickness.

Columba sends the consecrated pebble, with a prescription that the water

in which it is dipped is to be drunk. If, before he drinks, Broichan

releases his slave, he is to recover; if not, he dies. The Magus

complies, and is saved. The consecrated stone, which had the quality of

floating in water like a nut, was afterwards, as we are told, preserved

in the treasury of the king of the Picts. It has been lost to the world,

along with the saint's white robe and his consecrated banner, both of

which performed miracles after his death. But the sanitary influence

attributed to the water in which consecrated stones have been dipped, is

a superstition scarcely yet uprooted in Scotland.

Sermons in Stones.

One of the clubs has lately deviated from the printing of letterpress,

which is the established function of clubs, into pictorial art. As it

threatens to repeat the act on a larger scale, it is proposed to take a

glance at the result already afforded, in order that it may be seen

whether it is a failure, or a success opening up a new vein for club

enterprise. In distributing a set of pictorial prints among its members,

the club in question may be supposed to have invaded the art-unions: but

its course is in another direction, since its pictures are entirely

subservient to archæology. The innovator in question is the Spalding

Club, which has already distributed among its adherents a collection of

portraits of the sculptured stones in Scotland, and now proposes to do

the same by the early architectural remains of the north. In giving

effect to such a design, it will produce something like Dugdale's

Monasticon and the great English county histories.

If that which is to be done shall rival that which the club has

achieved, it will be worthy of all honour. No one can open the book of

The Sculptured Stones without being almost overwhelmed with astonishment

at the reflection that they are not monuments excavated in Egypt, or

Syria, or Mexico, but have stood before the light of day in village

churchyards, or in marketplaces, or by waysides throughout our own

country. As you pass on, the eye becomes almost tired with the endless

succession of grim and ghastly human figures--of distorted limbs--of

preternatural beasts, birds, and fishes--of dragons, centaurs, and

intertwined snakes--of uncouth vehicles, and warlike instruments, and

mystic-looking symbols--of chains of interlaced knots and complex

zigzags, all so crowding on each other that the tired eye feels as if it

had run through a procession of Temptations of St Anthony or Faust

Sabbaths. When this field of investigation and speculation is surveyed

in all its affluence, one is not surprised to find that it has been

taken in hand by a race of bold guessers, who, by the skilful appliance

of a jingling jargon of Asiatic, Celtic, and classical phraseology, make

nonsense sound like learning too deep to be fathomed. So, while

Rusticus will point out to you "the auld-fashioned standin' stane"--on

which he tells you that there are plain to be seen a cocked hat, a pair

of spectacles, a comb, a looking-glass, a sow with a long snout, and a

man driving a gig,--Mr Urban will describe to you "a hieroglyphed

monolith" in the terms following:--

"The Buddhist triad is conspicuously symbolised by what the peasantry

call a pair of spectacles. It consists of two circles, of which the one,

having its radius 1-3/4 inch wider than the other, is evidently Buddha,

the spiritual or divine intellectual essence of the world, or the

efficient underived source of all; the other is Dharma, the material

essence of the world--the plastic derivative cause. The ligamen

connecting them together, completes the sacred triad with the Sangha

derived from and composed of the two others. Here, therefore, is

symbolised the collective energy of spirit and matter in the state of

action, or the embryotic creation, the type and sum of all specific

forms, spontaneously evolved from the union of Buddha and Dharma. The

crescent, likened by the vulgar-minded peasantry to a cocked hat, is the

embodiment of the all-pervading celestial influence; and the decorated

sceptres or sacred wands of office, laid across it at the mystic angle

of forty-five degrees, represent the comprehensive discipline and

cosmopolite authority of the conquering Sarsaswete. The figure of the

elephant--undoubted evidence of the oriental origin of this

monoglyph--represents the embryo of organised matter; while in the

chariot of the sun the never-dying Inis na Bhfiodhlhadth threads the

sacred labyrinth, waving a branch of the Mimosa serisha, which has been

dipped in a sacred river, and dried beneath the influence of Osiris. The

figures called a comb and a looking-glass are the lingal emblems of the

sacred Phallic worship. The whole hierograph thus combines, in an

extremely simple and instructive unity, the symbolisation of Apis,

Osiris, Uphon, and Isis, Phallos, Pater Æther, and Mater Terra, Lingam

and Yoni, Vishnu, Brama, and Sarsaswete, with their Saktes, Yang and

Yiri, Padwadevi, Viltzli-pultzli, Baal, Dhanandarah, Sulivahna and Mumbo

Jumbo."

The honest transcripts in the club book clear away a great deal of that

unknown which is so convertible into the magnificent. It was extremely

perplexing to understand that the elephant was profusely represented

upon memorials familiar to the eyes of the inhabitants of Scotland, at a

period, if we might credit some theories, anterior to the time when

Roman soldiers were appalled in the Punic war by the sudden apparition

of unknown animals of monstrous size and preternatural strength. The

whole flood of oriental theory was let loose by this evidence of

familiarity with the usages of Hindostan. But it is pretty evident,

when we inspect him closely, that the animal, though a strange beast of

some peculiar conventional type, is no elephant. That spiral winding-up

of his snout, which passed for a trunk, is a characteristic refuge of

embryo art, repeated upon other parts of the animal. It is necessitated

by the difficulty which a primitive artist feels in bringing out the

form of an extremity, whatever it may be--snout, horn, or hoof. He finds

that the easiest termination he can make is a whirl, and he makes it

accordingly. Thus the noses, the tails, the feet of the characteristic

monster of the sculptured stones, all end in a whirl, as the final

letter of an accomplished and dashing penman ends in a flourish. The

same difficulty is met in repeated instances on these stones by another

ingenious resource. Animals are united or twined together by noses or

tails, to enable the artist to escape the difficulty of executing the

extremities of each separately.

There is a propensity to believe that whatever is old must have

something holy and mysterious about it. It is difficult to suppose that,

in making an ornament, men who would be so venerable, were they alive

now, as our ancestors of many centuries ago, can have been in the

slightest degree affected by the pomps and vanities of this wicked

world. Hence there is never a quaint Gothic decoration, floral or

animal, but it must be symbolic of some great mystery. So the

reticulated and geometrical tracery on the sculptured stones has been

invested with mythic attributes, under such names as "the Runic Knot."

It has been counted symbolical of a mysterious worship or creed, and has

been associated with Druids and other respectable, but not very

palpable, personages.[83]

[Footnote 83: It would not be difficult to trace a resemblance between

some of the exceedingly elaborate sculpture of the New Zealanders and

that of the sculptured stones, especially in the instance of the very

handsome country-house of the chief Rangihaetita, represented in Mr

Angas's New Zealanders Illustrated. Its name, by the way, in the native

Maori, is Kai Tangata, or Eat-man House--so called, doubtless, in

commemoration of the many jolly feasts held in it, on missionaries and

others coming within Wordsworth's description of

"A being not too wise and good

For human nature's daily food."]

Good theories are such a rarity in the antiquarian world, that it is a

luxury to find one which, in reference to this sort of decoration,

merits that character. The buildings, both ecclesiastical and civil, of

the early Christians of the North were, as we have seen, made of wattles

or wicker-ware. The skill, therefore, of the architectural decorator

took the direction of the variations in basket-work. We know that in the

Gothic age those forms which were found the most endurable and graceful

in which stone could be placed upon stone, became also the ruling forms

which guided the carver and the painter; so that all wood-work,

metal-work, seal-cutting, illumination of books, and the like, repeated

the ornaments of Gothic architecture. It would only, then, be a

prototype of an established phenomenon were it to be found that the

sculptor of an earlier age adopted the decorations developed by the

skillful platting of withes or wattles; and accordingly, this is just

the character of the platted ornaments so prevalent on the sculptured

stones.[84] But, however these may have been suggested, they show the

work of the undoubted artist, and furnish, as the advertisements say, "a

varied assortment of the most elegant and attractive patterns."

[Footnote 84: See "An Attempt to Explain the Origin and Meaning of the

Early Interlaced Ornamentation found on the Ancient Sculptured Stones of

Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man, by Gilbert J. French of Bolton."

Privately printed.]

Every one who in future attempts to unravel the mystery of these

primitive sculptures must not only in gratitude but in common justice

pay homage to the services of Mr John Stuart, the secretary of the

Antiquaries' Society of Scotland, to whose learning and zeal he owes the

collective means of examining them. It will interest many to know that

Mr Stuart has been at work again, and has a second collection of

transcripts, in some respects even more instructive than the first.

These will show, for instance, the point of junction between the

sculptures of the East and of the West, which, in their extreme special

features, are widely unlike each other.

In the mean time, as the reader is perhaps tired of all this talk about

books, and I would fain part with him in good humour, I venture to take

him on an imaginary ramble in the wilds of Argyllshire, in search of

specimens of ancient native sculpture, that he may have an opportunity

of noticing how much has yet to be gleaned off this stony field. So we

are off together, on a fresh summer morning, along the banks of the

Crinan Canal, until we reach the road which turns southward to Loch Swin

and Taivalich. After ascending so far, we strike off by a scarcely

discernible track, and climb upwards among the curiously broken

mountains of South Knapdale. When we are high enough up we look on the

other side of the first ridge, and see the brown heather dappled with

tiny lakes, looking like molten silver dropped into their hollows; while

far below, one of the countless branches of Loch Swin winds through a

narrow inlet, among rocks cushioned to the water's edge with deep green

foliage. We are not to descend to the region of lake and woodland,

betrayed by this glimpse, but to keep the wilder upland; and at last, in

a secluded hollow near the small tarn called Lochcolissor, we reach a

deserted village--a collection of roofless stone houses, looking, if one

judged from mere externals, as if they might in their early days have

given shelter to Columba or Oran. In the centre of this group of

domestic ruins is an affluent fountain of the clearest water. Standing

over it is the object of our search--a tall, grey, profusely-lichened

stone. At first it seems amorphous, as geologists say; but a closer view

discloses on the one side a cross incised, on the other a network of

floral decorations in relief. To trace these in their completeness, it

would be necessary to accomplish the not easy task of removing the

coating of lichen; and, by the way, if adepts in the cryptogamic

department of botany shall succeed in finding a test of the precise age

of those lichens, which they believe they have proved to be the growth

of centuries, a key of the most valuable kind will be obtained for

discovering the age of stone monuments.[85]

[Footnote 85: Any one who desires to see the extent to which science can

find employment in this arid-looking corner of organic life, may look at

a "Memoir on the Spermogones and Pycnides of Filamentous, Fruticulose,

and Foliaceous Lichens," by Dr William Lauder Lindsay, in the 22d volume

of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.]

Turn now in another direction. At the head of Loch Fyne, near Dunderar,

the grim tower of the Macnaughtons--which, from some decorations on it,

looks hugely like as if it had been built in the seventeenth century

with the stones of an old church--we find a tuft of trees with a dyke

round it, called Kilmorich. It is a graveyard evidently, though it may

not have been recently opened; the surface is uneven, and several rough

stones, which may have been placed there at any time, stick through the

earth. These, after a deliberate inspection, are found to have nothing

of a sculptural character. But a small piece of rounded stone appears

above the grass, and a little grubbing discloses a font, faintly

decorated with some primitive fluting, on which a stone-mason would look

with much scorn, and a scratching of a galley, the symbol of the Argyll

family, or some other of the races descended from ancient sea-kings.

This gives encouragement, and a sharper glance around betrays a

singular-looking rounded headstone, in which are two crescent-shaped

holes. There are corresponding holes on the portion under the sod, which

thus completes the rounded head of an ancient Scoto-Irish cross. The

next point is to find the shaft--it lies not far off, deep in the turf.

And when we take the grass and moss from its face, it discloses some

extremely curious quadrilateral decorations, quite peculiar, and not in

conformity with any type of form which would enable its date to be

guessed at within a century or two of the reality.

Passing through the rich woods of Ardkinglas, in a few miles we reach

the burying-ground, called of old Kilmaglas, but now the well-kept

churchyard, in which stands the modern church of Strachur. There are

many who will remember the white house glimmering through the trees, and

lament that memory is now all that it contains for them. Here are

several curious specimens of sculpture. Some stones, not of the oldest

type, have the crossed sword, symbolical alike of the warrior character

of the dead and the religion of peace in which he rests. There is one

with a figure in full chain-armour; and others, again, of an older date,

ornamented with the geometric reticulations already discussed.

Descending a few miles farther, in the small fertile delta of the

Lachlan, and overshadowed almost by the old square castle of the

M'Lachlans, there is a bushy enclosure which may be identified as the

old burial-place of Kilmory. A large block of hewn stone, with a square

hole in it, sets one in search of the cross of which it was the socket.

This is found in the grass, sadly mutilated, but can be recognised by

the stumps of the branches which once exfoliated into its circular head.

Beside it lies a flat stone, on which a sword is surrounded by graceful

floral sculpture.

Let us cross over again to the valley perforated by Loch Crinan.

Northward of the canal there is a remarkable alluvial district, through

which, although it seems crowded with steep mountain summits, one can

travel over many a mile of level turf. From this soil the hills and

rocks rise with extreme abruptness, in ridges at the border of the

plain, and in isolated peaks here and there throughout its flat alluvial

surface. Conspicuous, in a minor degree, is a great barrow like a

pyramid, with a chamber roofed with long stones in its centre. Near it

is one of those circles of rough stones called Druidical, and farther on

there is another, and then another; some of them tall pillars, others

merely peeping above ground. They literally people the plain. This must

have been a busy neighbourhood, whatever sort of work it may have been

that went on around these untooled fragments of the living rock, which

have so distracted our antiquaries in later centuries. If they were the

means or the object of any kind of heathen worship, then the existence

close beside them of the vestiges of early Christianity may be set down

as an illustration of the well-known historical opinion, that the first

Christian missionaries, instead of breaking the idols and reviling the

superstitions of those whom they went to convert, professed to bring a

new sanctity to their sacred places, and endeavoured to turn their

impure faith, with the least possible violence, into the path of purity.

Our next trial is at Kilmichael, about three miles from Loch Gilp. The

churchyard is extremely fruitful in sculptured stones of various

kinds--some floral, others geometrical, with wild beasts, monsters, and

human figures. One of them was pointed out as the tomb of a member of

the house of Campbell, who bore the name of Thomas, and was a great

bard, and lived in London and other great cities--Thomas Campbell, in

short. It seems to be true that his ancestors were buried in Kilmichael

churchyard, but my informant seemed to struggle with an idea that the

stone covered with the sculpture of a far-past century had been really

raised to his honour. The next generation will probably assert this as a

fact. The genesis of such traditions is curious. The stone called Rob

Roy's tomb, which lies beside an ancient font in the churchyard of

Balquhidder, is a sculptured stone raised for some one who had probably

died in wealth and honour hundreds of years before Rob stole cattle.

By a slight ascent westward of the alluvial plain we reach Kilmartin, a

village with a large modern church. Its graveyard is graced with many

sculptured stones--twenty-five may be counted, conspicuous for their

rich carving and excellent preservation. On one or two of the latest in

date, there are knightly figures clad in chain-mail. A local antiquary

could probably trace these home to some worshipful families in the

neighbourhood, but there are others beyond the infancy of the oldest

authentic pedigrees. While the stones in the eastern counties are all of

extremely remote antiquity, offering no link of connection with later

times, these Highland specimens seem to carry their peculiarities with

modified variations through several centuries into times comparatively

late. There are among them stones bearing some types of extreme

antiquity, and others which undoubtedly proclaim themselves as no older

than the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. It is sometimes a difficult

task, in judging of antiquities, to make a sufficient allowance for the

spirit of imitation. There is nothing certainly more natural than that a

new tombstone should be made after the fashion of time-honoured

monuments, the pride of the graveyard in which it is to be placed. In

Kilmartin there are two decided imitations of the more ancient class of

the western sculptured stones. Though the symbols and decorations which

they bear are of ancient outline, the heavy, and at the same time

accurate and workmanlike, way in which they are cut, would mark them

indubitably as modern, even if the one did not bear the date of 1707,

and the other of 1711.

But the sun is dropping behind Ben Cruachan and the Jura hills. The time

of holiday reading and holiday rambling has come to its end; and a voice

calls the wanderer back to more sedate and methodical pursuits.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

INDEX.

Aberdeen laird, an, described by his wife, 10 _et seq._

Adams, Dr Francis, an eminent Greek scholar, 264 _et seq._

Adventures of Saints, 396, 397.

Advertisements, reading of, 156 _et seq._

--curious historical interest of, 160 _et seq._

Aidan and Columba, 383.

Ailbhe, St, and the cranes, 390.

Albania, a poem, reprinted by Leyden, 196.

Alexandrian Library, destruction of, by fire, 211.

Almanacs, as affording profitable reading, 155 _et seq._

Amateur book-hunters, 106 _et seq._

Ambrosian Library, the, at Milan, 198.

American collections dealing with early American history, 189 _et seq._

Americans duplicating old European Libraries, 174

--in relation to art and letters, _ib._

--combating for rarities, 175

--ransacking and anatomising private collections, 178.

Ancient literature, considerable amount of, lost, 324.

Angelo Maï of the Vatican, 229

--recovery by him of Institute of Gaius, 326.

Annotating of books a crime and a virtue, 185 _et seq._

Antiquarianism known as archæology, 3.

Architecture, Church, of the early British Christians, 372.

Ardsnischen, Pastor of, buying a Greek New Testament, 60.

Armagh, Book of, 388 _et seq._

Assessed Taxes Department in relation to decay of libraries, 192.

Astor, John Jacob, the bequest of, 174.

Astorian Library, wealth of the, 176 _et seq._

Atticus as a dealer and capitalist publisher, 108 _note_.

Attorneys in Norwich, in Norfolk, and in Suffolk, 141 _et seq._

Auchinleck Press, account of, 294 _et seq._

Auctioneers: Carfrae, 60 _et seq._

--Evans, 93 _et seq._

--anecdote of a Cockney auctioneer, 178.

Auction-haunter different from prowler, 88 _et seq._

Authors and compositors, 77 _et seq._

Bacon commending brevity of old Scots Acts, 146.

Bailiff, the, and the writ, 136 _note_.

Baillet, Adrien, librarian and author of Jugemens des Savans, 230

_et seq._

Ballad fabricating, 306.

Bannatyne Club, 284 _et seq._

--Scott's song for festivities of, 285.

Barclay, Colonel, a Quaker, anecdote of, 9 _note_.

Bargain hunters and their leanings, 162.

Baskerville, the Birmingham printer, inaccuracy of, 67.

Bede on the Saints, 379.

Bentham, words in one sentence of an Act of Parliament counted by, 144.

Bethune, Rev. Dr, Waltonian Library of, 87 _et seq._

Bible, inaccurate editions of, 67 _et seq._

--old editions comparatively numerous, 218.

Bibliognoste, definition of, 5 _note_.

Bibliographe, definition of, 5 _note_.

Bibliographers, function of, a cruel one, 237 _et seq._

--victimising each other, 242.

Bibliographical Decameron, various quotations from, 93, 294 _et seq._

Bibliographies, 233 _et seq._

--on special subjects, 235

--those devoted to the best books, 239.

Bibliomane, definition of, 5.

Bibliomania a disease, 13.

"Bibliomania," Dibdin's, quotations from, 18

--Ferriar's, quotation from, 86, 87 _note_.

Bibliophile, definition of, 5.

Bibliotaphe, definition of, 5.

_Bibliothèque bleue_, anecdote connected with the, 50.

Bibliuguiancie discussed by Peignot, 220.

"Bill-books" of compositors, 79 _et seq._

Binders, famous, 28.

Bindings, "Inchrule" Brewer's love of, 28

--bindings as relics, 30.

Boccaccio, _editio princeps_ of, 91

--cause of its extreme rarity, 92

--sold at the Roxburghe Library sale, 94 _et seq._

Bodleian Library, origin of, 198.

Bohemian of literature, 108 _et seq._

Bohun, Edmond, a Jacobite and last English licenser, 208.

Bollandus, his great work on the Saints, 355 _et seq._

--the persistent labours of his successors, 356.

Book-caterers, 20 _et seq._

Book-clubs, 243 _et seq._

--their structure, 251

--advantages of, 255 _et seq._

--confining their attention to books of non-members, 257

--the Sydenham Club, 265

--the Roxburghe Club, _ib. et seq._, &c.

--their gradual growth, 266 _et seq._

--Dibdin's description of the origin of the Roxburghe Club, 267

--their secrecy, 271

--the Bannatyne Club, 284 _et seq._

--book-club men, _ib. et seq._

--character of their editors, 307, 315

--value of such clubs to history, 309

--their literature, 311

--Camden Club, _ib._

--Chetham Club, 312

--Surtees Club, _ib._

--Maitland Club, _ib._

--Spalding Club, _ib._

--Irish Archæological and other Clubs, _ib. et seq._

--purity of text of book-club literature, and consequent historical

value, 322 _et seq._, 327

--as art unions, 404 _et seq._

Book-hunters as creators of libraries, 168 _et seq._, 197

--as preservers of literature, 205 _et seq._

--as _chiffoniers_, 219

--as discoverers of valuable and curious books, 224

--as librarians, 227 _et seq._

--their clubs, 243 _et seq._

--various titles of, 5, 6

--vision of mighty book-hunters, 14

--book-hunters as bibliothaptes and bibliolytes, 54 _et seq._

--classification of, 64 _et seq._

--as Rubricists, 63

--as aspirants after large paper copies, 86

--their place in the dispensations of Providence, 101 _et seq._

--the harmlessness and advantages of their disease, 102 _et seq._

--book-hunters and dealers, 104

--in relation to other hobby-riders, 105

--their lack of mercenary spirit, _ib. et seq._

--in the amateur phase, 106 _et seq._

--their freedom from low company, 109

--their intellectual advantages, _ib. et seq._

--from their pursuit readers and scholars, 114

--their delight in a new toy, 123.

Books, annotating of, a crime and a virtue, 185 _et seq._

--their decay from natural causes, 211 _et seq._

--books, large and solid, factors in the acquisition of fame, 215

--such only fitted for authors and students, 252

--books, small and fragile, preserved by book-hunters, 215

--rarity of old school-books, _ib. et seq._

--importance of any kind of old books, 217

--rare books printed by early English printers, 218 _et seq._

--David Clement on rare books, 224 _et seq._

--rare books not always rare, 225

--books as introducers of books, 233

--reproduction of old and rare books by book-clubs, 246 _et seq._

--books used in Ireland in sixth century, 388.

Boswell, Sir Alexander, as a book-club man, 292 _et seq._

--his reprints, 293

--his Auchinleck Press, 294

--his character and writings, 295 _et seq._

Botfield, Beriah, his work, 194 _note_.

Bourdaloue, favourite reading of, 112.

Brewer, "Inchrule," as a mighty book-hunter, 25 _et seq._

--origin of his name, 26

--his love of bindings, 28

--his satellites, 31 _et seq._

British Museum, deposits of books in, 194 _note_

--origin of library, 197 _et seq._

Brunet as an "Inchruler," 26

--his description of an Elzevir Cæsar, _ib. note_.

Buckle, historical researches of, 342.

"Bulls," Irish, in unlikely books, 132 _et seq._

--specimen of an index "bull," 133.

Burton, Mr, private library of, 182 _et seq._

Butler, poetical remains of, discovered by the antiquary Thyer, 326.

Camden Club, purpose of, 311

--a curious volume of, 315 _et seq._

"Canadian," mistaken use of, for Candian, 74.

Carfrae, the auctioneer, 60 _et seq_.

--selling fragments of early English poetry, 61.

"Causes Célèbres," records of French and German crime, 149 _et seq._

--their fitness for novel-making, 150.

Celtic Christianity, 369 _et seq._, 377 _et seq._

Chetham Club, purpose of, 312.

Church architecture of early British Christians, 372 _et seq._

Classical literature, incompleteness of, 324

--recent discoveries in, of paltry value, 325 _et seq._

Classification of book-hunters, 62.

Clement, David, illustrious French bibliographer, 224.

Clubs in general, 243 _et seq._

Cogswell, Dr, first librarian of the Astorian Library, 174 _et seq._

Collectors and their satellites, 30 _et seq._

--as book-readers, 113 _et seq._

--in relation to the scholar, 115.

Columba, St Adamnan's life of, 374

--among the Picts, 377

--settling succession of Aidan, 383

--anecdotes of, 387, 389, 403, &c.

--Columba fishing, 395.

Compositors, characteristics of, 76 _et seq._

--their reasons for interest in an author's work, 77 _et seq._

--"bill-books" of, 79

--their professional apathy, 81.

Copyright Act, value of, 191.

"Course of reading," a so-called, 110.

Creation of libraries, 168 _et seq._

Criminal trials, attractive interest of, 148

--"illustrating" of, 150.

Cuthbert, St, and the solan-geese, 390 _et seq._

Dame aux Camélias quoted, 10 _note_.

Dealers in their relations to book-buyers, 107.

Decay of books, 211 _et seq._

De Quincey on the Society of Friends, 8, 9.

Desultory reader, or Bohemian of literature, 108 _et seq._

Devices of old printers, collection of, 64 _et seq._

Dibdin, quotation from his Bibliomania, 18

--known as "Foggy Dibdin," 89

--at the Roxburghe sale, 91

--as a book-hunter, 165--on the cradle of the book-club system, 267

--his "Library Companion," 280 _et seq._

"Didot" Horace, in the Junot Library, 63.

Dietrich, collection of theses by, 64.

Diogenes, the so-called tub of, 120 _note_.

Directory of a city, the, as affording profitable reading, 155.

Douglas, Francis, anecdote told in his description of the east coast of

Scotland, 9 _note_.

"Dragon" as a book-hunter, _vide_ "Vampire."

Drunkenness of a former age, 11.

Duplicates, first buying of, 16

--most virulent form of bibliomania, 173.

Early Northern Saints, 352 _et seq._

Ecchellensis, Abraham, his controversy with Flavigny, 67.

Ecclesiastical architecture, 372 _et seq._

Ecclesiologist, the, as editor of book-club literature, 321.

Editions of the Classics, typographical blunders in, 68.

"Editio princeps," advantages of possessing an, 167

--of Boccaccio, 91.

Elzevir Cæsar, Brunet's measurement of, 26

--origin of its rarity, 66.

Elzevirs, reason of their not being rare at present, 225.

Errors in the various editions of the Bible, 67 _et seq._

Evans, the auctioneer, 93.

Exchequer bill, curious specimen of, 134 _et seq._

Facsimiles, extensive manufacture of, 27.

Farmer, Dr Richard, and Johnson, 130 _et seq._

Feuerbach's German collection of _causes célèbres_, 149.

Ferrier's Bibliomania, quotation from, 86 _note_.

Fires in libraries, 210 _et seq._

Fisher, Rev. John, Bishop of Rochester, originator of Library of

St John's, 204 _et seq._

Flavigny's controversy with Abraham Ecchellensis, 67.

Fountains, religious controversies connected with, 401 _et seq._

French _causes célèbres_, 149 _et seq._

French novels, the morals of, 10.

Friends, Society of, greatest criminals found among, 8

--De Quincey's testimony to the same effect, _ib. et seq._

Furniture, old, 192.

Fustian, curious statute of Henry VII. concerning, 142 _et seq._

Game of Chess, by Caxton, captured in Holland by Snuffy Davie, 222.

Genealogist, a, as editor of book-club literature, 316 _et seq._

--his influence and genius, 318.

Genealogy, Scottish peculiarities in, 317

--extract on, from the Liber de Antiquis Legibus, 318.

Genius, rewards of, unequally distributed, 258.

Glasgow, the shield argent of, 393 _et seq._

Gleaner, the, and his harvest, 124 _et seq._

"Good reader," a, the bore of a house, 113.

Gordon, Sir Robert, collector of Gordonstoun Library, 97 _et seq._

Government and public libraries, 191.

Graham, Mr Lorimer, collection by, 186 _et seq._

Grandison, Sir Charles, his perfection a defect, 8.

"Grangerites," peculiar glory of, 82 _et seq._

--origin of name, _ib._

--their mode of proceeding, 83 _et seq._

Greek nomenclature, abuses and merits of, 2.

Grollier, a princely collector, 48.

Hagiology, 353.

Hallervord, John, Bibliotheca Curiosa of, 241.

Harvard Library, loss of old, 190.

Havelok the Dane reprinted by Roxburghe Club, 279.

Hazlewood, Joseph, a black sheep in the Roxburghe Club, 272

--description of his treasures, _ib. et seq._

--title of one of his reprints, 273

--description of another of his reprints, _ib. note_

--fate of his History, 274.

Heathenism in the British Isles, 400 _et seq._

Heber, Richard, origin of his library, 98 _et seq._

--Dibdin and Heber, 99

--duplicating his collection, 173.

Hierology of Greece, 359.

Highland springs, pilgrimages to, 299.

Historical literature, reprints of, 327

--in manuscript, _ib. et seq._

Histrio-Mastix of Prynne, its unfortunate history, 129 _et seq._

Hobby, the, of book-hunting, 101 _et seq._

Hortensius, 267.

Illustrating of criminal trials, 150

--its advantages to posterity, _ib. et seq._

--at its height, 180 _note_.

--illustrating a folio copy of Shakespeare, _ib. note_.

Illustrators of books, the, known as "Grangerites," 82

--their mode of proceeding, 83 _et seq._

Imperfect copies, completion of, 27.

Index Expurgatorius of Charles Lamb, 152 _note_.

Inlaying, process of, 219.

Iona, the saints of, 382.

Ireland, history of, in early times fabulous, 362;

Keating's History, _ib. et seq._

Ireland, primitive church in, 368 _et seq_.

Irish Archæological and other Clubs, 312 _et seq._

Irish "bulls," instances of, 132.

Irish statutes and Irish history, 146 _et seq._

Jöcher, Allgemeines Gelehrten Lexicon of, 235.

Johnson and Dr Richard Farmer, 130 _et seq._

Johnston, Captain, his Lives of Highwaymen and Pirates, 149.

Jolly, Bishop Robert, 244

--as a book-hunter, 245.

"Jolly" Club, the, 246.

Jones, Sir William, reading Cicero, 111.

Junot, the library of, 63.

Keating, Jeffrey, D.D., his History of Ireland, 363 _et seq._

Kent, Chancellor, collection of, 184 _et seq._

Kentigern, St, anecdotes of, 392 _et seq._

Knox, Vicesimus, Spirit of Despotism by, 197.

Lamb, Charles, Index Expurgatorius of, 152 _note_.

Large-paper copies, aspirants after, 86.

Laurentian Library at Florence, 198.

Law books, composition of, 118.

Law maxims, absurd book on, 138 _note_.

Law papers as furnishing humorous reading, 135 _et seq._

Law technicalities, vagaries of, 136 _et seq._

Levant monks, apathy of, with reference to priceless books, 209.

Librarians recruited from the ranks of book-hunters, 227

--disadvantages of "Cerberus" librarians, 228 _et seq._

--Angelo Maï of the Vatican, 229

--Magliabecchi, _ib. et seq._

--Adrien Baillet, 230 et _seq._

--librarians as scholars, 231 _et seq._

Libraries as stimulants to intellectual culture, 115 _et seq._

--growth of great libraries, 169

--impossibility of their being improvised, _ib. et seq_.

--their gradual accumulation, 170 _et seq._

--Imperial Library at Paris, 176, 205, &c.

--size of American libraries, Harvard, Astorian, Library of Congress,

Boston Athenæum, 176

--their large number in the States, _ib._

--The Private Libraries of New York, by James Wynne, M.D., 177

--specimen of a New York interior, 182

--library of Chancellor Kent, 184 _et seq._

--of Mr Lorimer Graham, 186

--of Rev. Dr Magoon, 187 _et seq._

--of Mr Menzies, 189 _note_

--Harvard Library, 190

--Government and public libraries, 191

--privileged libraries and the Copyright Act, 193 _note_

--British Museum Library, 197 _et seq._

--Ambrosian Library at Milan, 198

--Laurentian Library at Florence, _ib._

--Bodleian Library, _ib._

--Memoirs of Libraries, by Edward Edwards, 199 _note_

--Durham College Library, nucleus of Trinity of Oxford, 203

--burning of Alexandrian Library, 211.

Licensing, abolition of, in England, 208.

Limiting number of impressions, 281 _et seq._

Literary forgeries, moral code of, 303 _et seq._

Long Parliament, proceedings of, 328 _et seq._

Lucullus, Magnus, of Grand Priory, 46 _et seq._

Lycanthropy, 279.

Magi, in their conflicts with saints, 401 _et seq._

Magliabecchi, the librarian, 229 _et seq._

Magoon, Rev. Dr, library of, 187 _et seq._

Maitland Club, 312.

Margaret, Queen of Scotland, as a saint, 355.

Meadow, Archdeacon, description of as a mighty book-hunter, 14

--at an auction, 15

--a portion of his collection sold, 17

--reputed to read his own books, 18

--his learning, 19.

Medici, library of the, 198 _et seq._

Men of the Time, printers' blunders in, 75.

Menzies, Mr, valuable American collection of, 189 _note_.

Metaphysics, origin of name, 127.

Monkbarns as a book-hunter, 165 _et seq._

--his description of Snuffy Davie's prowlings, 221 _et seq._

Nathalan, St, anecdote of, 395.

Newgate Calendar, interest of, 148.

New York, private libraries of, 177 _et seq._

Nomenclature, Greek, abuses and merits of, 2.

Noy, Attorney-General, and the Histrio-Mastix, 130.

Oelrichs, John Charles Conrad, rare work by, 207.

Old writers, their careful disclaiming of original ideas, 117.

Olio, Grose's, extract from, 54 _note_.

Onslow, Mr, and naming of members of Parliament, 131.

Owen's Parallelograms, the nature of, 13

--biographical notice of Owen in Men of the Time, 75 _et seq._

Oxford, Bishop of, biographical notice of, in Men of the Time, 75.

Palæographist, meaning of the name, 3.

Palimpsest, meaning of, 3.

Pamphlets, careful preservation of, enforced, 339.

Panel, meaning of, in England and in Scotland, 138.

Papaverius, Thomas, 32 _et seq._

--his unpunctuality, 33

--his costume, _ib. et seq._

--his eloquence, 35, 36

--on vagrancy, 38

--his irresponsibility in pecuniary matters, 39

--his charity, 41

--as a philosopher of human nature, 42

--as a book-hunter, _ib. et seq._

--as a borrower of books, 43 _et seq._

--his acute sensibility, 45.

Peignot, his Dictionnaire de Bibliologie, 127 _note_, 207

--his dictionary of condemned books, 208

--as a vagabond bibliographer, 239 _et seq._

Philobiblion of Richard of Bury, 199

--extract from, 220 _note_.

Photius, curious history of the Bibliotheca of, 236.

Picts, St Columba among the, 377.

Pinkerton, John, description of, 285.

Playbills, collection of, a phase of bibliomania, 64.

Poems and plays as relics of pure literature, 217 _et seq._

Popular authors objects of competition among publishers, 260 _et seq._

Preservation of literature, 205 _et seq._

--politics and religion, with reference to, 208

--wars and revolutions with reference to, 209

--books in the midst of fire, 210.

Pretenders, 161 _et seq._

--generally bargain-hunters, 162

--their devices, 163.

Printers' blunders serviceable to literature, 71 _et seq._

--laughable examples of, 72 _et seq._

--tragic results of, 75

--examples of, in Men of the Time, 76.

Printing press, private, an appalling form of bibliomania, 293

--possession of, by Sir Alexander Boswell, 294.

Professional dealer, the, 107.

Prowler different from auction-haunter, 88 _et seq._

Prynne and his Histrio-Mastix, 129 _et seq._

Publishers and good literature, 262.

Quaker collector of paintings, a, anecdote of, 103.

Queen Cadyow and St Kentigern, 394.

Rambles in search of sculptured stones, 411 _et seq._

Rarity, the comparative, of certain books, 170 _et seq._

--Americans and the rarity of books, 173 _et seq._

--rarity of works of early English printers, 218 _et seq._

--rarity increased by increased number of copies, 282.

Ratcliffe, Dr, a physician, 69 _note_.

Reading of books by book-hunters and possessors of libraries, 109

--impossible in certain cases, 110

--ought to be desultory, _ib. et seq._

"Reading with the fingers" a test of scholarship, 116.

Religion and politics in reference to the preservation of literature,

208.

Religious hypocrites, uncharitableness and intolerance of, 7

--their development into criminals, 8.

Reminiscences of a book-hunting life, 59 _et seq._

"Remnants," or broken books, 254.

Rent-paying in Scotland, 140 _note_.

Resuscitated literature, peculiar value of, 324

--objected to in hagiology, 359.

Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, as a private collector, 199 _et seq._

--as a benefactor of posterity, 200 _et seq._

--originator of Durham College Library, the nucleus of Trinity of

Oxford, 203

--on the treatment of manuscripts (quotation from the Philobiblion),

220 _note_.

Ritson, Joseph, opponent of John Pinkerton, 287 _et seq._

--his peculiarities, 288 _et seq._

Robespierre, draft of decree before, concerning the public libraries of

Paris, 209.

Romans as introducers of Christianity into Great Britain, 360, 379

--as slighters of history, 360 _et seq._

Rout upon Rout, by Felix Nixon, 57.

Roxburghe Club, 97, 265 _et seq._

--its origin, 268

--its dinner and toasts, 269

--its members, 270

--its "revels," 275

--Hazlewood's connection with, _ib._ and _note et seq._

--reprinting by, of ancient books, 278 _et seq._

--its first serious efforts, 279

--Dibdin as its master, 280

--under the care of the scholarly Botfield, 281

--its proffer of membership to Sir Walter Scott, 283 _et seq._

Roxburghe, Duke of, as a book-hunter, 90, 164

--origin of his bibliomania, 90 _et seq._

Roxburghe Library, sale of, 89 _et seq._

--scenes at the auction, 92 _et seq._

--Earl Spencer present, 93 _et seq._

Rubricists, book-hunters as, 63.

Rule, Gilbert, ghost-story concerning, 346 _et seq._

"Runic Knot," the, 409.

Saints, the early Northern, 352 _et seq._

--the making of, 353

--festival days of, 354 _et seq._

--Bollandus and his successors on saints, 355 _et seq._

--value in history of saint literature, 358 _et seq._

--vestiges of the peculiar characteristics of early Northern saints,

371 _et seq._

--their church architecture, 372

--saints of Irish origin innumerable, 375

--independent of Rome, 381

--mostly all obscure, _ib. et seq._

--as prophesiers of death, 383

--personal habits of, 389

--fishing and marine anecdotes of, 395 _et seq._

Scholars in relation to collectors, 115 _et seq._

School-books, rarity of old, 215 _et seq._

Schoolboy life, reminiscences of, conjured up by an advertisement, 157

_et seq._

Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, a curious book, 240.

Scots Acts, brevity of, 146.

Scott, Sir Walter, as a book-club man, 283

--his admission to the Roxburghe Club, _ib. et seq._

--writing a song for the Bannatyne Club, 285

--his reprint of a trial for murder, 290 _et seq._

--imposed on by Robert Surtees, 300 _et seq._

--first idea of Waverley suggested to him by Surtees, 306.

Sculptured stones in Scotland, 405 _et seq._

--description of one, 406

--their character, 407 _et seq._

--Mr John Stuart's transcripts of, 410

--ramble in search of, 411 _et seq._

--one of them at Lochcolissor, _ib._

--others in various parts, 412 _et seq._

Seneca commending literary moderation, 119 _note_.

Serf, St, and his robin, 392.

Shakespearian criticism a branch of knowledge, 69 _et seq._

--valuable to literature, 71.

Sheepfolds, Ruskin on the construction of, 125.

Sloane, Sir Hans, originator of British Museum Library, 197.

Smart, Fitzpatrick, as a mighty book-hunter, 19

--his peculiar line known as the "Fitzpatrick Smart Walk," 20

--his fancy ill to please, 21

--his household gods, 22

--his dress, 23

--his wonderful genius, 25

--fate of his collection, _ib._

Smithsonian Institution, origin of, 174.

Snuffy Davie, a prince of book-hunters, 166

--his capture of the Game of Chess, 222.

Societies, book and other, 247 _et seq._

--the transactions of learned, an outlet for genius, 262 _et seq._

Spalding Club, 312

--as an art-union, 404.

Spalding, John, value of his literary remains, 330 _et seq._

--quotation from his "Memorials," 333 _et seq._

--characteristics of his writings, 337.

Spencer, Earl, at the Roxburghe Library sale, 93 _et seq._

--his skirmish for the Caxtons, 123.

Spottiswoode Society, purpose of the, 247.

State trials replete with romance, 148.

Stated-task reader, the, 113.

Statute-making, pleasantry in, 143.

Stuart, Mr John, and the sculptured stones in Scotland, 410.

Superstitions, a book on, replete with errors in language, 153 _et seq._

Surtees Club, 312.

Surtees, Robert, the historian of Durham, as a book-club man, 298

--anecdotes of, _ib. et seq._

--imposing on Sir Walter Scott, 300 _et seq._

--his contributions to Scott's Minstrelsy, 304

--suggesting Waverley to Scott, 306.

Sydenham Club, 265.

Thomson, James, and his books, 29

--his uncle's criticism on "Winter," _ib._

Thomson, Rev. William, character of, 67 _et seq._

--his translation of Cunningham's Latin History of Britain, 68 _note_.

Title of an English Act, 145.

Title-page, a, no distinct intimation of contents of book, 124

--framing of exhaustive title-page, 126 _et seq._

--specimen of lengthy title-page, 127

--advantages of such, 128.

Toy literature, 216 _note._

Transactions of learned societies, 262.

Trinity Library, Oxford, origin of, 203.

Types of Guttenberg and Faust, beauty of, 218.

Types, MacEwen on the, its fate at an auction, 125.

Typographical blunders, 71 _et seq._

United States well stocked with libraries, 176

--its citizens as book-hunters, 177.

"Vampire" as a book-hunter, 55

--his collection, 56 _et seq._

--his policy at auctions, 57 _et seq._

Vellum books, 63.

Verney, Sir Ralph, noting proceedings of the Long Parliament,

328 _et seq._

Vision, a, of mighty book-hunters, 14 _et seq._

Vulgate of Sixtus V., multitude of errors in, 67.

Waltonian Library, the, of Rev. Dr Bethune, 87 _et seq._

Wars and revolutions, factors in the destruction of libraries, 209.

Watt, Dr, his bibliography, 234.

Watts, Isaac, and the "Grangerites," 83 _et seq._

Wells dedicated to saints, 397 _et seq._

Wilberforce, Samuel, Bishop of Oxford, humorous blunder in a

biographical notice concerning, 76.

Wilbrod, St, and the Frisian Prince, 376.

William and the Wer Wolf reprinted by Roxburghe Club, 279 _et seq._

Wodrow, Rev. Robert, his literary remains and collections, 338

--his private note-books, 340

--extracts from his note-books concerning "special providences,"

343 _et seq._

--his ghost and witch stories, 346 _et seq._

--anecdote concerning the devil's sermon, 349 _et seq._

"Ye" and "the," common delusion concerning, 270 _note_.

THE END.

Imprinted by William Blackwood and Sons, at their Printing Office,

32 Thistle Street, Edinburgh.

[Illustration]