THE WORLD'S DEBT TO THE IRISH 
you behold a majestic face divinely drawn, there the 
mystical forms of the evangelists, each having some- 
times six, sometimes four and sometimes two wings; 
here an eagle, there a calf, there a human face and a 
lion and other figures in infinite variety, so cleverly 
wrought together that if you looked carelessly at 
them, they would seem like a uniform blot composed 
without skill or special study, rather than art. But, 
if you look closely with all the acuteness of sight 
that you can command and examine the inmost 
secrets of that wondrous art, you will discover such 
delicate, such subtle, such fine and closely wrought 
lines, twisted and interwoven in such intricate knots 
and adorned with such fresh and brilliant colors that 
you will readily acknowledge the whole to have been 
the result of angelic rather than human skill. The 
more frequently I behold it, the more diligently I 
examine it, the more numerous are the beauties I 
discover in it, and the more I am lost in renewed 
admiration of it.” 
With regard to the possibility that the Book of 
Kells and the wonderful manuscript of the Gospel 
which Giraldus Cambrensis saw at Kildare are the 
same or not, after reviewing the whole situation Sir 
Edward Sullivan says: 
“One can only conclude that the book which the 
historian did see was one of the many beautiful 
illuminated manuscripts that have since disappeared, 
though not the Kells volume; and that commentators 
have been somewhat too ready to adopt without 
much investigation a theory for which there seems 
to be but very little evidential support.” 
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