Chapter 21: , forbidding the importation of foreign coals, was designed (1)

to render this country independent of English trade. At that time the bogs were larger and the people fewer. Their opinion that this importation which "hindered the industry of several poor people and labourers who might have employed themselves" in supplying the cities, etc., with turf, reminds us of Mr. Laing's most able notice in his "Norway" of the immense employment to men, women, and children, by the cutting of firewood; and what a powerful means this is of doing that which is as important as the production of wealth, the diffusion of it without any great inequality through all classes. Part of c. 29, encouraging trade, laying heavy import duties on English goods, and giving privileges to Irish ships over foreign, especially over English, was the result of sound, practical patriotism. It was necessary to guard our trade, manufactures, and shipping against the rivalry of a near, rich, and aspiring neighbour, that would crush them in their cradles. It was wise to raise the energies of infant adventure by favour, and not trust it in a reckless competition. The example, too, of all countries which had reared up commerce by their own favour and their neighbours' surrender of trade, would have justified them.

Besides the schools for the Navy under c. 29, c. 16 deals also with schools. We have not the latter Act; but, considering James's known zeal for education, his foundation of the Kilkenny college, and the spirit of the provision in c. 29, we may guess the liberality of the other. One of the most distinguished of our living historians has told us that he remembered having seen evidence that this Act established a school for general (national) education in every parish in Ireland.

C. 10, the Act of Supply; c. 25, Martial Law, and this Act, c. 29, were a code of defence. The supply was proportioned to their abilities: every exertion was made, and all efforts were needed. Plowden puts the effect of this c. 29 not ill:--

"Although James were averse from passing the acts I have already
mentioned, he probably encouraged another which passed _for the
advance and improvement of trade and for encouragement and increase
of shipping and navigation_, which purported to throw open to
Ireland a free and immediate trade with all our plantations and
colonies; to promote ship-building, by remitting to the owners of
Irish-built vessels large proportions of the duties of custom and
excise, encourage seamen by exempting them for ten years from
taxes, and allowing them the freedom of any city or seaport they
should chuse to reside in, and improve the Irish navy by
establishing free schools for teaching and instructing in the
mathematics and the art of navigation, in Dublin, Belfast,
Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and Galway. If James looked up to any
probability of maintaining his ground in Ireland he must have been
sensible of the necessity of an Irish navy. No man was better
qualified to judge of the utility of such institutions than this
prince. He was an able seaman, fond of his profession; and to his
industry and talent does the British navy owe many of its best
signals and regulations. The firmness, resolution and enterprise
which had distinguished him, whilst Duke of York, as a sea officer,
abandoned him when king, both in the cabinet and the field."

Thus, then, this Parliament exercised less severity than any of its time; it established liberty of conscience and equality of creeds; it proscribed no man for his religion--the word Protestant does not occur in any Act--(though, while it sat, the Westminster Convention was not only thundering out insults against "popery," but exciting William to persecute it, and laying the foundation of the penal code); it introduced many laws of great practical value in the business of society; it removed the disabilities of the natives, the scars of old fetters; it was generous to the king, yet carried its own opinions out against his where they differed; it, finally--and what should win the remembrance and veneration of Irishmen through all time--it boldly announced our national independence, in words which Molyneux shouted on to Swift, and Swift to Lucas, and Lucas to Flood, and Flood and Grattan redoubling the cry; Dungannon church rang, and Ireland was again a nation. Yet something it said escaped the hearing or surpassed the vigour of the last century; it said, "Irish commerce fostered," and it was faintly heard, but it said, "an Irish navy to shield our coasts," and it said, "an Irish army to scathe the invaders," and Grattan neglected both, and our coast had no guardian, and our desecrated fields knew no avenger.

We have printed the king's speech at the opening of this eventful parliament, the titles of _all_ its Acts, and all the statutes summarized in full detail which we could in any way procure--sufficient, we think, with the scattered notices of the chief members, to make the working of this Parliament plain. We are conscious of many defects in our information and way of treating the subject; but we commenced by avowing that we were not professors but students of Irish history; trying to come at some clear understanding on a most important part of it, communicating our difficulties and offering our solutions, as they occurred to us, in hopes that some of our countrymen would take up the same study, and do as much or more than we have done, and possibly that one of those accomplished historians, of which Ireland now has a few, would take the helm from us, and guide the ship himself.

We have no reason to suppose that we succeeded in either object; yet we cling to the belief that, owing to us, some few persons will for the future be found who will not allow the calumnies against our noble old Parliament of 1689 to pass uncontradicted. It might have been better, but this is well.

---------------------------------------------------------------
[29] The dates about the time of this revolution are most
important. On the 10th October, 1688, William issued an address,
dated at the Hague, and another from the same place, dated 24th
October, intended to counterwork James's retractations. He landed
at Torbay, November 5th, arrived in London December 17th. Some Whig
Lords signed an association, dated December 19th, pledging
themselves to stand by the prince, and avenge him if he should
perish. December 23rd, William issued the letter calling the
members of Charles II.'s parliament, the mayor, aldermen, and 50
councillors of London. December 26th they met, called on the prince
to assume the government and issue letters for a convention, and
they signed the association of the Whig Lords. They presented their
address 27th December, it was received December 28th, and then this
little club broke up. December 29th William issued letters for a
convention, which met 22nd January, 1688-9, finally agreed on their
declaration against James and his family, and for William and Mary,
12th February; and these, king and queen, were proclaimed 13th
February, 1688-9. February 19th, a Bill was brought in to call the
convention a parliament; it passed, and received royal assent 23rd
February. By this the lords and gentlemen who met 22nd January were
named the two houses of parliament, and the acts of this
convention-parliament were to date from 13th February. This hybrid
sat till 20th August, and having passed the Attainder Act was
adjourned to 20th September, and then 19th October, 1689. This
second session lasted till 27th January, 1689-90, when it was
stopped by a prorogation to the 2nd April; but before that day it
was dissolved, and a parliament summoned by writ, which met 20th
March, 1689, and as a first law, passed an act ratifying the
proceedings of the convention.

II. Literary and Historical Essays.

MEANS AND AIDS TO SELF-EDUCATION.

"What good were it for me to manufacture perfect iron while my own
breast is full of dross? What would it stead me to put properties
of land in order, while I am at variance with myself? To speak it
in a word: the cultivation of my individual self, here as I am, has
from my youth upwards been constantly though dimly my wish and my
purpose."

"Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest;
the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of
the beautiful and perfect; that every one should study to nourish
in his mind the faculty of feeling these things by every method in
his power. For no man can bear to be entirely deprived of such
enjoyments; it is only because they are not used to taste of what
is excellent, that the generality of people take delight in silly
and insipid things, provided they be new. For this reason, he would
add, 'one ought at least every day to hear a little song, read a
good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a
few reasonable words.'"--_Goethe._

We have been often asked by certain of the Temperance Societies to give them some advice on Self-Education. Lately we promised one of these bodies to write some hints as to how the members of it could use their association for their mental improvement.

We said, and say again, that the Temperance Societies can be made use of by the people for their instruction as well as pleasure. Assemblies of any kind are not the _best_ places either for study or invention. Home or solitude are better--home is the great teacher. In domestic business we learn mechanical skill, the nature of those material bodies with which we have most to deal in life--we learn labour by example and by kindly precepts--we learn (in a prudent home) decorum, cleanliness, order--in a virtuous home we learn more than these: we learn reverence for the old, affection without passion, truth, piety, and justice. These are the greatest things man can know. Having these he is well; without them attainments of wealth or talent are of little worth. Home is the great teacher; and its teaching passes down in honest homes from generation to generation, and neither the generation that gives, nor the generation that takes it, lays down plans for bringing it to pass.

Again, to come to designed learning. We learn arts and professions by apprenticeships, that is, much after the fashion we learned walking, or stitching, or fire-making, or love-making at home--by example, precept, and practice combined. Apprentices at anything, from ditching, basket-work, or watch-making, to merchant-trading, legislation, or surgery, submit either to a nominal or an actual apprenticeship. They see other men do these things, they desire to do the same, and they learn to do so by watching _how_, and _when_, and asking, or guessing _why_ each part of the business is done; and as fast as they know, or are supposed to know, any one part, whether it be sloping the ditch, or totting the accounts, or dressing the limb, they begin to do that, and, being directed when they fail, they learn at last to do it well, and are thereby prepared to attempt some other or harder part of the business.

Thus it is by experience--or trying to do, and often doing a thing--combined with teaching or seeing, and being told how and why other people more experienced do that thing, that most of the practical business of life is learned.

In some trades, formal apprenticeship and planned teaching exist as little as in ordinary home-teaching. Few men are of set purpose taught to dig; and just as few are taught to legislate.

Where formal teaching is usual, as in what are called learned professions, and in delicate trades, fewer men know anything of these businesses. Those who learn them at all do so exactly and fully, but commonly practise them in a formal and technical way, and invent and improve them little. In those occupations which most men take up casually--as book-writing, digging, singing, and legislation, and the like--there is much less exact knowledge, less form, more originality and progress, and more of the public know something about them in an unprofessional way.

The Caste system of India, Egypt, and Ancient Ireland carried out the formal apprenticeship plan to its full extent. The United States of America have very little of it. Modern Europe is between the two, as she has in most things abolished caste or hereditary professions (kings and nobles excepted), but has, in many things, retained exact apprenticeships.

Marriage, and the bringing up of children, the employment of dependants, travel, and daily sights and society, are our chief teachers of morals, sentiment, taste, prudence and manners. Mechanical and literary skill of all sorts, and most accomplishments, are usually picked up in this same way.

We have said all this lest our less-instructed readers should fall into a mistake common to all beginners in study, that books, and schooling, and lectures, are the chief teachers in life; whereas most of the things we learn here are learned from the experience of home, and of the practical parts of our trades and amusements.

We pray our humbler friends to think long and often on this.

But let them not suppose we undervalue or wish them to neglect other kinds of teaching; on the contrary, they should mark how much the influences of home, and business, and society, are affected by the quantity and sort of their scholarship.

Home life is obviously enough affected by education. Where the parents read and write, the children learn to do so too, early in life and with little trouble; where they know something of their religious creed they give its rites a higher meaning than mere forms; where they know the history of the country well, every field, every old tower or arch is a subject of amusement, of fine old stories, and fine young hopes; where they know the nature of other people and countries, their own country and people become texts to be commented on, and likewise supply a living comment on those peculiarities of which they have read.

Again, where the members of a family can read aloud, or play, or sing, they have a well of pleasant thoughts and good feelings which can hardly be dried or frozen up; and so of other things.

And in the trades and professions of life, to study in books the objects, customs, and rules of that trade or profession to which you are going saves time, enables you to improve your practice of it, and makes you less dependent on the teaching of other practitioners, who are often interested in delaying you.

In these, and a thousand ways besides, study and science produce the best effects upon the practical parts of life.

Besides, the _first_ business of life is the improvement of one's own heart and mind. The study of the thoughts and deeds of great men, the laws of human, and animal, and vegetable, and lifeless nature, the principles of fine and mechanical arts, and of morals, society, and religion--all directly give us nobler and greater desires, more wide and generous judgments, and more refined pleasures.

Learning in this latter sense may be got either at home or at school, by solitary study, or in associations. Home _learning_ depends, of course, on the knowledge, good sense, and leisure of the parents. The German Jean Paul, the American Emerson, and others of an inferior sort, have written deep and fruitful truths on bringing up and teaching at home. Yet, considering its importance, it has not been sufficiently studied. Upon schools much has been written. Almost all the private schools in this country are bad. They merely cram the memories of pupils with facts or words, without developing their judgment, taste, or invention, or teaching them the _application_ of any knowledge. Besides, the things taught are commonly those least worth learning. This is especially true of the middle and richer classes. Instead of being taught the nature, products, and history, first of their own, and then of other countries, they are buried in classical frivolities, languages which they never master, and manners and races which they cannot appreciate. Instead of being disciplined to think exactly, to speak and write accurately, they are crammed with rules and taught to repeat forms by rote.

The National Schools are a vast improvement on anything hitherto in this country, but still they have great faults. From the miserably small grant the teachers are badly paid, and, therefore, hastily and meagrely educated.

The maps, drawing, and musical instruments, museums and scientific apparatus, which should be in every school, are mostly wanting altogether. The books, also, are defective.

The information has the worst fault of the French system: it is too exclusively on physical science and natural history. Fancy a _National_ School which teaches the children no more of the state and history of Ireland than of Belgium or Japan! We have spoken to pupils, nay, to masters of the _National_ Schools, who were ignorant of the physical character of every part of Ireland except their native villages--who knew not how the people lived, or died, or sported, or fought--who had never heard of Tara, Clontarf, Limerick, or Dungannon--to whom the O'Neills and Sarsfields, the Swifts and Sternes, the Grattans and Barrys, our generals, statesmen, authors, orators, and artists, were alike and utterly unknown! Even the hedge schools kept up something of the romance, history, and music of the country.

Until the _National_ Schools fall under national control, the people must take _diligent care to procure books on the history, men, language, music, and manners of Ireland for their children_. These schools are very good so far as they go, and the children should be sent to them; but they are not _national_, they do not use the Irish language, nor teach anything peculiarly Irish.

As to solitary study, lists of books, pictures, and maps can alone be given; and to do this usefully would exceed our space at present.

As it is, we find that we have no more room and have not said a word on what we proposed to write--namely, Self-Education through the Temperance Societies.

We do not regret having wandered from our professed subject, as, if treated exclusively, it might lead men into errors which no afterthought could cure.

What we chiefly desire is to set the people on making out plans for their own and their children's education. Thinking cannot be done by deputy--they must think for themselves.

THE HISTORY OF IRELAND.

Something has been done to rescue Ireland from the reproach that she was a wailing and ignorant slave.

Brag as we like, the reproach was not undeserved, nor is it quite removed.

She is still a serf-nation, but she is struggling wisely and patiently, and is ready to struggle, with all the energy her advisers think politic, for liberty. She has ceased to wail--she is beginning to make up a record of English crime and Irish suffering, in order to explain the past, justify the present, and caution the future. She begins to study the past--not to acquire a beggar's eloquence in petition, but a hero's wrath in strife. She no longer tears and parades her wounds to win her smiter's mercy; and now she should look upon her breast and say:--"That wound makes me distrust, and this makes me guard, and they all will make me steadier to resist, or, if all else fails, fiercer to avenge."

Thus will Ireland do naturally and honourably.

Our spirit has increased--our liberty is not far off.

But to make our spirit lasting and wise as it is bold--to make our liberty an inheritance for our children, and a charter for our prosperity--we must study as well as strive, and learn as well as feel.

If we attempt to govern ourselves without statesmanship--to be a nation without a knowledge of the country's history, and of the propensities to good and ill of the people--or to fight without generalship, we will fail in policy, society, and war. These--all these things--we, people of Ireland, must know if we would be a free, strong nation. A mockery of Irish independence is not what we want. The bauble of a powerless parliament does not lure us. We are not children. The office of supplying England with recruits, artizans, and corn, under the benign interpositions of an Irish Grand Jury, _shall_ not be our destiny. By our deep conviction--by the power of mind over the people, we say, No!

We are true to our colour, "the green," and true to our watchword, "Ireland for the Irish." We want to win Ireland and keep it. If we win it, we will not lose it nor give it away to a bribing, a bullying, or a flattering minister. But, to be able to keep it, and use it, and govern it, the men of Ireland must know what it is, what it was, and what it can be made. They must study her history, perfectly know her present state, physical and moral--and train themselves up by science, poetry, music, industry, skill, and by all the studies and accomplishments of peace and war.

If Ireland were in national health, her history would be familiar by books, pictures, statuary, and music to every cabin and shop in the land--her resources as an agricultural, manufacturing, and trading people would be equally known--and every young man would be trained, and every grown man able to defend her coast, her plains, her towns, and her hills--not with his right arm merely, but by his disciplined habits and military accomplishments. These are the pillars of independence.

Academies of art, institutes of science, colleges of literature, schools and camps of war, are a nation's means for teaching itself strength, and winning safety and honour; and when we are a nation, please God, we shall have them all. Till then we must work for ourselves. So far as we can study music in societies, art in schools, literature in institutes, science in our colleges, or soldiership in theory, we are bound as good citizens to learn. Where these are denied by power, or unattainable by clubbing the resources of neighbours, we must try and study for ourselves. We must visit museums and antiquities, and study, and buy, and assist books of history to know what the country and people were, how they fell, how they suffered, and how they arose again. We must read books of statistics--and let us pause to regret that there is no work on the statistics of Ireland except the scarce lithograph of Moreau, the papers in the second Report of the Railway Commission, and the chapters in _M'Culloch's Statistics of the British Empire_--the Repeal Association ought to have a handbook first, and then an elaborate and vast account of Ireland's statistics brought out.

To resume, we must read such statistics as we have, and try and get better; and we must get the best maps of the country--the Ordnance and County Index Maps, price 2_s._ 6_d._ each, and the Railway Map, price L1--into our Mechanics' Institutes, Temperance Reading-rooms, and schools. We must, in making our journeys of business and pleasure, observe and ask for the nature and amount of the agriculture, commerce, and manufactures of the place we are in, and its shape, population, scenery, antiquities, arts, music, dress, and capabilities for improvement. A large portion of our people travel a great deal within Ireland, and often return with no knowledge, save of the inns they slept in and the traders they dealt with.

We must give our children in schools the best knowledge of science, art, and literary elements possible. And at home they should see and hear as much of national pictures, music, poetry, and military science as possible.

And finally, we must keep our own souls, and try, by teaching and example, to lift up the souls of all our family and neighbours to that pitch of industry, courage, information, and wisdom necessary to enable an enslaved, dark, and starving people to become free, and rich, and rational.

Well, as to this National History--L'Abbe MacGeoghegan published a history of Ireland, in French, in 3 volumes, quarto, dedicated to the Irish Brigade. Writing in France he was free from the English censorship; writing for "The Brigade," he avoided the impudence of Huguenot historians. The sneers of the Deist Voltaire, and the lies of the Catholic Cambrensis, receive a sharp chastisement in his preface, and a full answer in his text. He was a man of the most varied acquirements and an elegant writer. More full references and the correction of a few errors of detail would render his book more satisfactory to the professor of history, but for the student it is the best in the world. He is graphic, easy, and Irish. He is not a bigot, but apparently a genuine Catholic. His information as to the numbers of troops, and other facts of our Irish battles, is superior to any other general historian's; and they who know it well need not blush, as most Irishmen must now, at their ignorance of Irish history.

But the Association for liberating Ireland has offered a prize for a new history of the country, and given ample time for preparation.

Let no man postpone the preparation who hopes the prize. An original and highly-finished work is what is demanded, and for the composition of such a work the time affords no leisure.

Few persons, we suppose, hitherto quite ignorant of Irish history, will compete; but we would not discourage even these. There is neither in theory nor fact any limit to the possible achievements of genius and energy. Some of the greatest works in existence were written rapidly, and many an old book-worm fails where a young book-thrasher succeeds.

Let us now consider some of the qualities which should belong to this history.

_It should, in the first place, be written from the original authorities._ We have some notion of giving a set of papers on these authorities, but there are reasons against such a course, and we counsel no man to rely on us--every one on himself; besides, such a historian should rather make himself able to teach us than need to learn from us.

However, no one can now be at a loss to know what these authorities are. A list of the choicest of them is printed on the back of the Volunteer's card for this year, and was also printed in the _Nation_.[30] These authorities are not enough for a historian. The materials, since the Revolution especially, exist mainly in pamphlets, and even for the time previous only the leading authorities are in the list. The list is not faulty in this, as it was meant for learners, not teachers; but anyone using these authorities will readily learn from them what the others are, and can so track out for himself.

There are, however, three tracts specially on the subject of Irish writers. First is Bishop Nicholson's "Irish Historical Library." It gives accounts of numerous writers, but is wretchedly meagre. In Harris's "Hibernica" is a short tract on the same subject; and in Harris's edition of Ware's works an ample treatise on _Irish Writers_. This treatise is most valuable, but must be read with caution, as Ware was slightly, and Harris enormously, prejudiced against the native Irish and against the later Catholic writers. The criticisms of Harris, indeed, on all books relative to the Religious Wars are partial and deceptious; but we repeat that the work is of great value.

The only more recent work on the subject is a volume written by Edward O'Reilly, for the Iberno-Celtic Society, on the Native Irish Poets: an interesting work, and containing morsels invaluable to a picturesque historian.

By the way, we may hope that the studies for this prize history will be fruitful for historical ballads.

Too many of the original works can only be bought at an expense beyond the means of most of those likely to compete. For instance, Harris's "Ware," "Fynes Moryson," and "The State Papers of Henry the Eighth," are very dear. The works of the Archaeological Society can only be got by a member. The price of O'Connor's "Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres" is eighteen guineas; and yet, in it alone the annals of Tigernach, Boyle, Innisfallen, and the early part of the "Four Masters" are to be found. The great majority of the books, however, are tolerably cheap; some of the dearer books might be got by combination among several persons, and afterwards given to the Repeal Reading-rooms.

However, persons resident in, or able to visit Dublin, Cork, or Belfast, can study all, even the scarcest of these works, without any real difficulty.

As to the qualities of such a history, they have been concisely enough intimated by the Committee.

It is to be A HISTORY. One of the most absurd pieces of cant going is that against history, because it is full of wars, and kings, and usurpers, and mobs. History describes, and is meant to describe, _forces_, not proprieties--the mights, the acted realities of men, bad and good--their historical importance depending on their mightiness, not their holiness. Let us by all means have, then, a "graphic" narrative of what was, not a set of moral disquisitions on what ought to have been.

Yet the man who would keep chronicling the dry events would miss writing a history. He must fathom the social condition of the peasantry, the townsmen, the middle-classes, the nobles, and the clergy (Christian or Pagan), in each period--how they fed, dressed, armed, and housed themselves. He must exhibit the nature of the government, the manners, the administration of law, the state of useful and fine arts, of commerce, of foreign relations. He must let us see the decay and rise of great principles and conditions--till we look on a tottering sovereignty, a rising creed, an incipient war, as distinctly as, by turning to the highway, we can see the old man, the vigorous youth, or the infant child. He must paint--the council robed in its hall--the priest in his temple--the conspirator--the outlaw--the judge--the general--the martyr. The arms must clash and shine with genuine, not romantic, likeness; and the brigades or clans join battle, or divide in flight, before the reader's thought. Above all, a historian should be able to seize on character, not vaguely eulogising nor cursing; but feeling and expressing the pressure of a great mind on his time, and on after-times.

Such things may be done partly in disquisitions, as in Michelet's "France"; but they must now be done in narrative; and nowhere, not even in Livy, is there a finer specimen of how all these things may be done by narrative than in Augustine Thierry's "Norman Conquest" and "Merovingian Scenes." The only danger to be avoided in dealing with so long a period in Thierry's way is the continuing to attach importance to a once great influence, when it has sunk to be an exceptive power. He who thinks it possible to dash off a profoundly coloured and shaded narrative like this of Thierry's will find himself bitterly wrong. Even a great philosophical view may much more easily be extemporised than this lasting and finished image of past times.

The greatest vice in such a work would be bigotry--bigotry of race or creed. We know a descendant of a great Milesian family who supports the Union, because he thinks the descendants of the Anglo-Irish--his ancestors' foes--would mainly rule Ireland, were she independent. The opposite rage against the older races is still more usual. A religious bigot is altogether unfit, incurably unfit, for such a task; and the writer of such an Irish history must feel a love for all sects, a philosophical eye to the merits and demerits of all, and a solemn and haughty impartiality in speaking of all.

Need we say that a history, wherein glowing oratory appeared in place of historical painting, bold assertion instead of justified portraiture, flattery to the living instead of justice to the dead, clever plunder of other compilers instead of original research, or a cramped and scholastic instead of an idiomatic, "clear and graphic" style, would deserve rejection, and would, we cannot doubt, obtain it.

To give such a history to Ireland as is now sought will be a proud and illustrious deed. Such a work would have no passing influence, though its first political effect would be enormous; it would be read by every class and side; for there is no readable book on the subject; it would people our streets, and glens, and castles, and abbeys, and coasts with a hundred generations besides our own; it would clear up the grounds of our quarrels, and prepare reconciliation; it would _unconsciously_ make us recognise the causes of our weakness; it would give us great examples of men and of events, and materially influence our destiny.

Shall we get such a history? Think, reader! has God given you the soul and perseverance to create this marvel?

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[30] The following is the list of books given as the present
sources of history:--

SOME OF THE ORIGINAL SOURCES OF IRISH HISTORY.

ANCIENT IRISH TIMES.

Annals of Tigernach, abbot of Clonmacnoise, from A.D. 200 to his
death, 1188, partly compiled from writers of the eighth, seventh,
and sixth centuries.

Lives of St. Patrick, St. Columbanus, etc.

Annals of the Four Masters, from the earliest times to 1616.

Other Annals, such as those of Innisfallen, Ulster, Boyle, etc.
Publications of the Irish Archaeological Society, Danish and
Icelandic Annals.

ENGLISH INVASION AND THE PALE.

Gerald de Barri, surnamed Cambrensis, "Topography" and "Conquest of
Ireland." Four Masters, Tracts in Harris's Hibernica. Campion's,
Hanmer's, Marlborough's, Camden's, Holingshed's, Stanihurst's, and
Ware's Histories. Hardiman's Statutes of Kilkenny.

Henry VIII. and Elizabeth.--Harris's Ware. O'Sullivan's Catholic
History. Four Masters. Spencer's View. Sir G. Carew's Pacata
Hibernia. State Papers, Temp. H. VIII. Fynes Moryson's Itinerary.

James I.--Harris's Hibernica. Sir John Davies' Tracts.

Charles I.--Strafford's Letters. Carte's Life of Ormond. Lodge's
Desiderata. Clarendon's Rebellion. Tichborne's Drogheda. State
Trials. Rinuccini's Letters. Pamphlets. Castlehaven's Memoirs.
Clanrickarde's Memoirs. Peter Walsh. Sir J. Temple.

Charles II.--Lord Orrery's Letters. Essex's Letters.

James II. and William III.--King's State of Protestants, and
Lesley's Answer. The Green Book. Statutes of James's Parliament, in
Dublin Magazine, 1843. Clarendon's Letters. Rawdon Papers. Tracts.
Molyneux's Case of Ireland.

George I. and II.--Swift's Life. Lucas's Tracts. Howard's Cases
under Popery Laws. O'Leary's Tracts. Boulter's Letters.
O'Connor's and Parnell's Irish Catholics. Foreman on "The Brigade."

George III.--Grattan's and Curran's Speeches and Lives--Memoirs of
Charlemont. Wilson's Volunteers. Barrington's Rise and Fall. Wolfe
Tone's Memoirs. Moore's Fitzgerald. Wyse's Catholic Association.
Madden's United Irishmen. Hay, Teeling, etc., on '98. Tracts.
MacNevin's State Trials. O'Connell's and Sheil's Speeches.
Plowden's History.

Compilations.--Moore. M'Geoghegan. Curry's Civil Wars. Carey's
Vindiciae. O'Connell's Ireland. Leland.

Current Authorities.--The Acts of Parliament. Lords' and Commons'
Journals and Debates. Lynch's Legal Institutions.

Antiquities, Dress, Arms.--Royal Irish Academy's Transactions and
Museum. Walker's Irish Bards. British Costume, in Library of
Entertaining Knowledge.

ANCIENT IRELAND.

There was once civilisation in Ireland. We never were very eminent, to be sure, for manufactures in metal, our houses were simple, our very palaces rude, our furniture scanty, our saffron shirts not often changed, and our foreign trade small. Yet was Ireland civilised. Strange thing! says someone whose ideas of civilisation are identical with carpets and cut-glass, fine masonry, and the steam engine; yet 'tis true. For there was a time when learning was endowed by the rich and honoured by the poor, and taught all over our country. Not only did thousands of natives frequent our schools and colleges, but men of every rank came here from the Continent to study under the professors and system of Ireland, and we need not go beyond the testimonies of English antiquaries, from Bede to Camden, that these schools were regarded as the first in Europe. Ireland was equally remarkable for piety. In the Pagan times it was regarded as a sanctuary of the Magian or Druid creed. From the fifth century it became equally illustrious in Christendom. Without going into the disputed question of whether the Irish church was or was not independent of Rome, it is certain that Italy did not send out more apostles from the fifth to the ninth centuries than Ireland, and we find their names and achievements remembered through the Continent.

Of two names which Hallam thinks worth rescuing from the darkness of the dark ages, one is the Irish metaphysician, John Erigena. In a recent communication to the "Association" we had Bavarians acknowledging the Irish St. Killian as the apostle of their country.

Yet what, beyond a catalogue of names and a few marked events, do even the educated Irish know of the heroic pagans or the holy Christians of Old Ireland? These men have left libraries of biography, religion, philosophy, natural history, topography, history, and romance. They _cannot all be worthless_; yet, except the few volumes given us by the Archaeological Society, which of their works have any of us read?

It is also certain that we possessed written laws with extensive and minute comments and reported decisions. These Brehon laws have been foully misrepresented by Sir John Davies. Their tenures were the gavelkind once prevalent over most of the world. The land belonged to the clan, and on the death of a clansman his share was re-apportioned according to the number and wants of his family. The system of erics or fines for offences has existed amongst every people from the Hebrews downwards, nor can anyone, knowing the multitude of crimes now punishable by fines or damages, think the people of this empire justified in calling the ancient Irish barbarous because they extended the system. There is in these laws, so far as they are known, minuteness and equity; and what is a better test of their goodness we learn from Sir John Davies himself, and from the still abler Baron Finglass, that the people reverenced, obeyed, and clung to these laws, though to decide by or obey them was a high crime by England's code. Moreover, the Norman and Saxon settlers hastened to adopt these Irish laws, and used them more resolutely, if possible, than the Irish themselves.

Orderliness and hospitality were peculiarly cultivated. Public caravansarais were built for travellers in every district, and we have what would almost be legal evidence of the grant of vast tracts of land for the supply of provisions for these houses of hospitality. The private hospitality of the chiefs was equally marked; nor was it quite rude. Ceremony was united with great freedom of intercourse, age, and learning, and rank, and virtue were respected, and these men, whose cookery was probably as coarse as that of Homer's heroes, had around their board harpers and bards who sang poetry as gallant and fiery, though not so grand, as the Homeric ballad-singers, and flung off a music which Greece never rivalled.

Shall a people, pious, hospitable, and brave, faithful observers of family ties, cultivators of learning, music, and poetry, be called less than civilised because mechanical arts were rude and "comfort" despised by them?

Scattered through the country in MS. are hundreds of books wherein the laws and achievements, the genealogies and possessions, the creeds and manners and poetry of these our predecessors in Ireland are set down. Their music lives in the traditional airs of every valley.

Yet _mechanical civilisation_, more cruel than time, is trying to exterminate them, and, therefore, it becomes us all who do not wish to lose the heritage of centuries, nor to feel ourselves living among nameless ruins, when we might have an ancestral home--it becomes all who love learning, poetry, or music, or are curious of human progress, to aid in or originate a series of efforts to save all that remains of the past.

It becomes them to lose no opportunity of instilling into the minds of their neighbours, whether they be corporators or peasants, that it is a brutal, mean, and sacrilegious thing to turn a castle, a church, a tomb, or a mound into a quarry or a gravel pit, or to break the least morsel of sculpture, or to take any old coin or ornament they may find to a jeweller, so long as there is an Irish Academy in Dublin to pay for it or accept it.

Before the year is out we hope to see A SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF IRISH MUSIC established in Dublin, under the joint patronage of the leading men of all politics, with branches in the provincial towns for the collection and diffusion of Irish airs.[31]

An effort--a great and decided one--must be made to have the Irish Academy so endowed out of the revenues of Ireland that it may be A NATIONAL SCHOOL OF IRISH HISTORY AND LITERATURE AND A MUSEUM OF IRISH ANTIQUITIES on the largest scale. In fact, the Academy should be a secular Irish College, with professors of our old language, literature, history, antiquities, and topography; with suitable schools, lecture-rooms, and museums.

---------------------------------------------------------------
[31] Like many of the suggestions of Thomas Davis this has borne
fruit. In our own day the Irish Folk Song Society (20 Hanover
Square, London, W.) as well as the Feis Ceoil and the Gaelic League
have done invaluable work in the direction indicated.--[Ed.]

HISTORICAL MONUMENTS OF IRELAND.

We were a little struck the other day in taking up a new book by Merimee to see after his name the title of "Inspector-General of the Historical Monuments of France." So then France, with the feeding, clothing, protecting, and humouring of thirty-six million people to attend to, has leisure to employ a Board and Inspector, and money to pay them for looking after the Historical Monuments of France, lest the Bayeux tapestry, which chronicles the conquest of England, or the Amphitheatre of Nimes, which marks the sojourn of the Romans, suffer any detriment.

And has Ireland no monuments of her history to guard; has she no tables of stone, no pictures, no temples, no weapons? Are there no Brehon's chairs on her hills to tell more clearly than Vallancey or Davies how justice was administered here? Do not you meet the Druid's altar and the Gueber's tower in every barony almost, and the Ogham stones in many a sequestered spot, and shall we spend time and money to see, to guard, or to decipher Indian topes, and Tuscan graves, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, and shall every nation in Europe shelter and study the remains of what it once was, even as one guards the tomb of a parent, and shall Ireland let all go to ruin?

We have seen pigs housed in the piled friezes of a broken church, cows stabled in the palaces of the Desmonds, and corn threshed on the floor of abbeys, and the sheep and the tearing wind tenant the corridors of Aileach.

Daily are more and more of our crosses broken, of our tombs effaced, of our abbeys shattered, of our castles torn down, of our cairns sacrilegiously pierced, of our urns broken up, and of our coins melted down. All classes, creeds and politics are to blame in this. The peasant lugs down a pillar for his sty, the farmer for his gate, the priest for his chapel, the minister for his glebe. A mill-stream runs through Lord Moore's Castle,[32] and the Commissioners of Galway have shaken and threatened to remove the Warden's house--that fine stone chronicle of Galway heroism.

How our children will despise us all for this! Why shall we seek for histories, why make museums, why study the manners of the dead, when we foully neglect or barbarously spoil their homes, their castles, their temples, their colleges, their courts, their graves? He who tramples on the past does not create for the future. The same ignorant and vagabond spirit which made him a destructive prohibits him from creating for posterity.

Does not a man, by examining a few castles and arms, know more of the peaceful and warrior life of the dead nobles and gentry of our island than from a library of books; and yet a man is stamped as unlettered and rude if he does not know and value such knowledge. Ware's _Antiquities_, and Archdall, speak not half so clearly the taste, the habits, the everyday customs of the monks, as Adare Monastery,[33] for the fine preservation of which we owe so much to Lord Dunraven.

The state of civilisation among our Scotic or Milesian, or Norman, or Danish sires, is better seen from the Museum of the Irish Academy, and from a few raths, keeps, and old coast towns, than from all the prints and historical novels we have. An old castle in Kilkenny, a house in Galway give us a peep at the arts, the intercourse, the creed, the indoor and some of the outdoor ways of the gentry of the one, and of the merchants of the other, clearer than Scott could, were he to write, or Cattermole were he to paint, for forty years.

We cannot expect Government to do anything so honourable and liberal as to imitate the example of France, and pay men to describe and save these remains of dead ages. But we do ask it of the clergy, Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenting, if they would secure the character of men of education and taste--we call upon the gentry, if they have any pride of blood, and on the people, if they reverence Old Ireland, to spare and guard every remnant of antiquity. We ask them to find other quarries than churches, abbeys, castles and cairns--to bring rusted arms to a collector and coins to a museum, and not to iron or goldsmiths, and to take care that others do the like. We talk much of Old Ireland, and plunder and ruin all that remains of it--we neglect its language, fiddle with its ruins, and spoil its monuments.[34]

---------------------------------------------------------------
[32] Mellifont, founded in 1142 by O'Carroll, King of
Oriel.--C.P.M.

[33] See _Irish Franciscan Monasteries_, by C.P.M., C.C.

[34] Again we note that, though late in the day, Davis's appeal has
been answered, and most of the important ancient monuments of the
country placed under official protection. The real need now is for
scientific exploration of the ancient sites.--[Ed.]

IRISH ANTIQUITIES.

There is on the north (the left) bank of the Boyne, between Drogheda and Slane, a pile compared to which, in age, the Oldbridge obelisk is a thing of yesterday, and compared to which, in lasting interest, the Cathedrals of Dublin would be trivial. It is the Temple of Grange. History is too young to have noted its origin--Archaeology knows not its time. It is a legacy from a forgotten ancestor, to prove that he, too, had art and religion. It may have marked the tomb of a hero who freed, or an invader who subdued--a Brian or a Strongbow. But whether or not a hero's or a saint's bones consecrated it at first, this is plain--it is a temple of nigh two thousand years, perfect as when the last Pagan sacrificed within it.[35]

It is a thing to be proud of, as a proof of Ireland's antiquity, to be guarded as an illustration of her early creed and arts. It is one of a thousand muniments of our old nationality which a national government would keep safe.

What, then, will be the reader's surprise and anger to hear that some people having legal power or corrupt influence in Meath are getting, or have got, _a presentment for a road to run right through the Temple of Grange_!

We do not know their names, nor, if the design be at once given up, as in deference to public opinion it must finally be, shall we take the trouble to find them out. But if they persist in this brutal outrage against so precious a landmark of Irish history and civilisation, then we frankly say if the law will not reach them public opinion shall, and they shall bitterly repent the desecration. These men who design, and those who consent to the act, may be Liberals or Tories, Protestants or Catholics, but beyond a doubt they are tasteless blockheads--poor devils without reverence or education--men, who, as Wordsworth says--

"Would peep and botanise
Upon their mothers' graves."

All over Europe the governments, the aristocracies, and the people have been combining to discover, gain, and guard every monument of what their dead countrymen had done or been. France has a permanent commission charged to watch over her antiquities. She annually spends more in publishing books, maps, and models, in filling her museums and shielding her monuments from the iron clutch of time, than all the roads in Leinster cost. It is only on time she needs to keep watch. A French peasant would blush to meet his neighbour had he levelled a Gaulish tomb, crammed the fair moulding of an abbey into his wall, or sold to a crucible the coins which tell that a Julius, a Charlemagne, or a Philip Augustus swayed his native land. And so it is everywhere. Republican Switzerland, despotic Austria, Prussia and Norway, Bavaria and Greece are all equally precious of everything that exhibits the architecture, sculpture, rites, dress, or manners of their ancestors--nay, each little commune would guard with arms these local proofs that they were not men of yesterday. And why should not Ireland be as precious of its ruins, its manuscripts, its antique vases, coins, and ornaments, as these French and German men--nay, as the English, for they, too, do not grudge princely grants to their museums and restoration funds.

This island has been for centuries either in part or altogether a province. Now and then above the mist we see the whirl of Sarsfield's sword, the red battle-hand of O'Neill, and the points of O'Connor's spears; but 'tis a view through eight hundred years to recognise the Sunburst on a field of liberating victory. Reckoning back from Clontarf, our history grows ennobled (like that of a decayed house), and we see Lismore and Armagh centres of European learning; we see our missionaries seizing and taming the conquerors of Europe, and, farther still, rises the wizard pomp of Eman and Tara--the palace of the Irish Pentarchy. And are we the people to whom the English (whose fathers were painted savages when Tyre and Sidon traded with this land) can address reproaches for our rudeness and irreverence? So it seems. The _Athenaeum_ says:--