PLATE III,
Is an early specimen of Byzantine art, about the eighth century, the principle of the Irish school being here adopted, on which the acanthus foliage of the Roman style is superadded. Some gorgeous specimens of this style are in most of the European libraries; but many valuable specimens of that period must have been lost, since the Iconoclastic fanatics destroyed so many thousands by the flames, from the end of the fifth to the seventh centuries.