Glory to yees both for ever!" and at one deep draught he emptied the goblet. Good by to you, Aby," he added, with a facetious nod, and the robber disappeared.

Aby M-Evoy slept with his fathers, but not until he had seen his child in the midst of a fair and happy household

the pride of his heart and the honor of his old age. Poor Jack continued to inhabit his solitary little home in the mouth of the glen. He led a laborious and happy life, and the only severe stroke he ever experienced was many years after, when he heard that his unfortunate brother who had been sent out of the country, in a condemned regiment, was shot in the suppression of a mutiny he had excited.

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THERE is nothing which more strongly marks the difference between this island and Great Britain, than a comparison of the libraries of an English and an Irish resident gentleman. It might be affirmed almost universally, that there is no residence of an English gentleman possessing an income of £2,000 a year, without a library; meaning not only a collection of books, but one more apartments fitted up with books, maps, &c. and kept exclusively for purposes of study. In Ireland there are many gentlemen of £5,000 a year, and upwards, who possess neither separate apartments for study, nor a sufficient quantity of books, if collected, to furnish even a moderate closet; while the collections of those who do possess nominal libraries, are not only in many cases very meagre, but are in almost every instance marked by a peculiar defect which would be alone sufficient to establish the difference alluded to, even though the material point of contrast did not exist. We allude to the marked deficiency of even our best private collections in those works which form a library of national history. This is the class of works which occupies the foremost shelf in every English study. Without such materials of study and reference every

man must feel himself a stranger in the country he inhabits. There is a species of national self-knowledge as conducive to public respectability as individual self-knowledge is to personal selfrespect. This knowledge of the country we inhabit, too many of our educated men have only upon hearsay. The causes of this want of information which in any other country would be considered a disgraceful species of ignorance, are chiefly these-first, a prevalent impression that there is no history of Ireland yet written; secondly, a feeling, that, if such a history were written, its study would not be necessary to a liberal education; and, thirdly, a dastardly fear of looking former times in the face, which is of all other motives to ignorance at once the most congenial and the most infatuated. It is true there is no adequate compilation of the existing materials for a history of Ireland; but the case was the same in England up to a comparatively recent period; yet it is impossible to point out any time since England had an historical existence.in which her educated classes were deficient in knowledge of their country's history. The fact that no history of Ireland is taught in our schools (an instance of self-abasement unexampled

cient in history, although, it must be granted, rich in law. We would rank Marsh's library next: here is an air of cloistered antiquity that agrees well with the solid theological burthen of the shelves: this is the place to study such writers as Ware and Usher, where the eye when raised from the page, rests on the secluded precincts of St. Patrick's, and the dust which an eager reader shakes from an upper shelf may have rested there since last disturbed by the hands of Swift. We come now to the library of the Royal Dublin Society, a practical and extensive collection, but not by any means rich in rare Irish works. The library itself is a cheerful and well-aired room, and it only wants the addition of some rarer works of reference, to be in all respects a most satisfactory place of study. The collection of the Royal Irish Academy is much more valuable, but the very inefficient manner in which this library is heated, renders prolonged study in it both disagreeable and dangerous. We have now reached the magnificent and truly valuable library of Trinity College, in which the Irish collection approaches so near perfection, that the addition of a few more volumes would remove it entirely from the general charge in which we have included it. Those acquainted with the ardour of the present acting librarian in Irish historical pursuits, will scarcely need to be told, that if diligence could find out where those works are to be had for liberality to purchase, they would not long be wanting on the shelves of the Dublin University. The labours of this learned individual have rendered this collection the most perfect of its

kind in the world, that of the British Museum itself not excepted. But the inconveniences chargeable against the library of the Royal Irish Academy, are trifling in comparison with the actual hardships which those who frequent the library of Trinity College for purposes of study must endure; for where the one is an apartment of about 35 by 25 feet, lighted from the top, and heated, however inefficiently, by steam, the other is a gallery as long and half as broad as Westminster Hall, lighted by upwards of ninety windows, so disposed as to produce fully forty separate thorough drafts, and not heated at all, either by steam or any other means. Summer and winter the same icy chill pervades it, and we are not sure if the fact of a dozen students being found together occupied at its dreary table. would not afford as strong evidence of an eager pursuit of learning among us as any other instance that could be adduced.*

Still it is astonishing to see how much the number of readers in this Nova Zembla of letters has increased within the last five years were the room at all safe for delicate people, as the studious usually are, to sit in for any length of time, we have no doubt that it would have an average daily attendance of from twenty to thirty all the year round. As it is, we suppose the total number of visits for purposes of study does not exceed two thousand in the year. The visits to the readingroom of the British Museum, for purposes of study, amounted, in the year 1835, to sixty-three thousand four hundred and sixty-six. Comment is needless;-and yet we would observe,

that of this average daily attendance of nearly two hundred individuals, perhaps a full third was Irish, and those the working men whose writings sustain the preeminence of the metropolitan press. But every thing in this noble institution is on a scale of grandeur and munificence that makes it a delightful subject to turn to, after even the best of our establishments at home. Good character your only introduction -a million and a half of books and manuscripts at your command-a reading room, commodious and comfortable as the best apartment of a large hotel, expressly for your occupation-numerous and intelligent porters to bring the books or manuscripts you have selected from the catalogues, to your table, and to remove them, when no longer required, to their proper shelves in the immense depositories withinsurrounded by several hundreds of the first scholars and writers of the ageyou sit, without the outlay of a single farthing, the enviable possessor of means to knowledge, which could not be purchased for ten millions of money. Nor is this all the officers of the establishment, men of high attainments, and of the most obliging manners, are ready to assist the inexperienced investigator by pointing out the proper course of study, and, if they find him diligent, by perhaps bringing him acquainted with other inquirers engaged on the same class of subjects. English decorum presides over the whole: no sound but that of the well-regulated machinery of the establishment interrupts the progress of study or the course of thought; and while you sit pondering your separate inquiry, a thousand new ideas are starting into existence on every side around yon-theories which are, perhaps, destined to dazzle future ages, are now developing their first rudiments in one mind-flashes of fancy that may yet delight the world, are glancing remotely through the imagination of another-facts that will confirm some great argument have been found and seized on by a third: here the wily politician decides what he shall quote, and what he shall suppress next evening in the assembly of the legislature there, the engineer or architect plans domes higher than St. Paul's, and bridges wider than the Menai, while poring over the magnificent portfolios of the king's library; in another place, the economist, marshalling his regiments of figures, rubs his hands as in fancy he reconciles the dis

crepancies of his favourite paradox ;— and yonder, oh, yonder sits the antiquary-he has got his hands upon a manuscript so rare that it is invaluable (shall we say so old that it is illegible?); and who can paint his rapture?—he knows not which first to turn to, the “characteres rotundi, nitidi, elegantes"-or the "atramentum æternitati sacrum”—or the illuminations dimly glimmering through that exquisite tarnish-or shall he not rather drop a tear over that lamentable hiatus of the first page, "unde difficile est dictu quo avo exaratus fuerit"? How often in the midst of such a scene have we laid down our book to think in what a wondrous laboratory of opinion, in what an amazing workshop of mind our privilege of living in an enlightened age and self-respecting country, had placed us!

But perhaps an equally delightful resort for the lover of manuscriptsand for the lover of the middle-age antiquities of Ireland, beyond comparison the most delightful in existence -is the palace at Lambeth. Here, under one roof with the Lollard's tower, overlooking the full, broad Thames, with the hall and abbey of Westminster rising, grand beyond expression, on its farther bank-the aged elms of Bird Cage Walk, rustling with breezes from Richmond under your window-the spirit of antiquity pervading the air you breathe-the genius of the constitution present in the very space around you to sit, as we have sat on a warm day in summer, turning over the autographs of Sidney and Sussex, and the impetuous Perrot (swearing great oaths in his very despatches)—of the politic Chichester, and the severe Mountjoy-of Desmond, and the White Knight and Florence M'Carthy-of "We, Shane O'Neill, from our camp at Knockboy," of Sorley Buy Mac Donnell, from Dunluce, and great Earl Hugh himself, from his castle of Dungannon-then to turn to the annals of Friar Clynn, or the Book of Howth, and mix again with the De Burghos and the Mortimers, the Laceys and the De Courceys of Norman timesor from narrative to have recourse to representation, and study native arms and costumes in the plans of battles and sieges, or trace our ancient topography in the plots of towns and castles or forfeited countries of rebel lords beyond the pale-to spend the hot mornings thus under the shadow of antiquity, and in the evenings to stroll about the precincts of the seat of government-the

Horse Guards, the Admiralty, the Treasury, the State-paper Office-it is enough to make a man a lover of history, and a reverer of the constitution for ever after. To the distinguished prelate, in whose keeping those treasures of literature are deposited, we would here pay our tribute of grateful acknowledgments, as well on our own part as on behalf of all our countrymen who have experienced his liberal permission of access to them. The same obliging disposition characterises the keepers of all the stores of learning in London: in the record room of the Tower itself, the student of official antiquities may be seen poring over the most precious rolls of the Edwards and Henrys. Nothing more strongly marks the respect in which such pursuits are held, than the fact of those sacred documents, which are altogether inaccessible to others, and the mere transcripts of which can only be procured at a high price for legal purposes, being put gratuitously into the hands of the student. It would be tedious to enumerate the other depositories of similar treasures to the Irish historian in England. Stowe, we believe, is now inaccessible, or nearly so, a churlish and a solitary exception to the long and honorable list of open English libraries.

We owe an explanation to our own University, which we may seem to have placed invidiously in comparison with other institutions. It is true, the public do not derive an advantage from its library proportionate to that enjoyed by them in the library of the British Museum. But it must be borne in

mind, that the British Museum is a public institution, bound to give value in this and other ways for yearly grants of the public money, while the University of Dublin is an independent corporation, governed by a charter which limits the use of its library to certain qualified persons; so that the utmost the liberality of the heads of the College can effect, is to give to those persons the best means of information, and the most suitable species of accommodation in their power. The first they have provided, and continue to provide, liberally and creditably; but we must renew our protest against the inadequacy of their provision (if provision it can be called) for the latter. Hitherto we have spoken of printed books and manuscripts in the English and Latin languages only. With regard to the more valuable Irish MSS. those which form the chief riches of the Royal Irish Academy and University libraries, we have less to say, as we conceive that the contents of these or any other works in the antique dialect of a language which it requires the study of years to understand, do not come legitimately within the sphere of our present subject. The object proposed is rather to give such occasional papers as may seem calculated to show that the study of accessible works on Irish history (which, we admit, it is our main purpose to inculcate) is neither dry nor barren, but abounds with as much food for amusing speculation and profitable reflection as is generally found to accompany the record of human life in other countries.

AT what period the primitive faith in Ireland became overlaid with those fantastic fables which are found in such abundance in all the legends of our early saints, it is hard to determine. For, if we condemn them all as forgeries of the purely monkish times, we cut away the authority on which a considerable part of the argument for the existence of any other than superstitious times in Ireland is made to rest. And if we recognize them as compositions of the early ages they purport to belong to, we find ourselves encumbered with a load of exploded absurdities in the very place where we have been accustomed to look for a church comparatively pure. That the discipline VOL. IX.

of any church, which, after the first conversion of a naturally sanguine and pious people, had no difficulty whatever to contend against for several centuries, should continue perfect among all the temptations to abuse arising out of undisputed authority and the contagion of barbarous manners, is far from probable; nor would it be reasonable to expect that the Irish church in the seventh century should exhibit the same simplicity which is traceable in our records of her in the fifth. Barbarism and superstition are mutually productive of one another. During the period between the decline of letters and the invention of the art of printing, the temptation to play upon the credulity

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