[Book Reviews]

Abstract

THIS is one of the South Kensington Museum Art Hand books, and it deserves to rank among the best of the series. The Christian antiquities of Ireland are in their own way as remarkable as any group of antiquities in the world, and a satisfactory account of them, such as ordinary readers might understand and appreciate, was greatly needed. In undertaking to supply what was wanted, Miss Stokes devoted herself to a task for which she was well equipped by previous study, and she has produced a little book which can hardly fail to excite interest in her subject, and which will be welcomed even by antiquaries to whom the facts of Irish archæology are already well known. A chapter on illumination is followed by one on Irish scribes on the Continent; and then corne chapters on metal-work, sculpture, building and architecture, with a chronological table of examples of Irish art the date of which can be approximately fixed. The work is illustrated by upwards of a hundred good woodcuts. In her treatment of all questions relating to early Christian art in Ireland, Miss Stokes displays a thoroughly scientific spirit, and her style has the merit of being always clear, fresh, and unpretending. She rightly claims for her subject that it has a practical as well as an intellectual interest. If the higher class of workers in Ireland took the trouble to study systematically the objects here so carefully described, an epoch might be marked in the development of Irish technical skill.

Early Christian Art in Ireland.

By Margaret Stokes. (Published for the Committee of Council on Education, by Chapman and Hall, 1887.)