suggest the Chinese lattice-work (so strongly insisted on by Semper as a constant motive), we also find in all their decorations compartments containing involved patterns of cords or strings knitted or plaited, suggesting the entrails of animals, which by these hunting people were consulted as being mysteriously prophetic of approaching events, especially success or failure in the chase, and impending warlike raids. There is no other way of accounting for these designs, which are peculiar to the race, unless we believe they always represent snakes. (Pl. 15.) In England much that was characteristic of the style was lost as soon as the Saxons drove out the Celts, who carried it to Ireland, as may be seen in the Book of Kells, and the carving of the Harp of Tara, and the Celtic jewels in the Irish museums; but the interlacing patterns survived throughout Anglo-Saxon art, and were marvellously ingenious and beautiful; witness the Durham Book of St. Cuthbert. We have no Celtic textiles remaining to us, unless some embroidery in the Marien-Kirche collection at Dantzic may be of that style and time. This is suggested by its altogether Indo-Chinese and very barbarous character; and one of the coronation mantles in Bock's "Kleinodien " is Runic in its peculiar serpent design. "Judging from their illuminated MSS.," it is said, "the elements borrowed from textile art by the Celts are plaits, bows, zigzags, knots, geometrical figures in various symmetrically developed combinations, crosses, whorls, and lattice-work; next, those taken from metal work, such as spirals and nail-heads let into borders; thirdly, simple or composite zoomorphic forms, such as bodies of See the Book of Lindisfarne, and the two Celtic bronze shields in the British Museum. These last are very curious. The long involved lines show their origin, and the shields are enriched with enamel and corals, in repetitions of the prehistoric cross. See" Album of Photographs of the Marien-Kirche, Dantzic," Taf. 31. |