kept his axe. The existence of these mercenary bands must have both injured the character of the sept itself as a union of patriarchal affection between chief and clansman, and have tended greatly to delay the formation of a regular monarchy and the ascendancy of law.

In speaking of the loose rule of inheritance in the succession to land, we have noticed the equally loose custom of Tanistry in succession to the chieftainship of the Sept. Not only was the successor elected without regard to any regular order of preference between the members of the principal family, or to legitimacy; but he was commonly elected during the lifetime of the chief. Such a practice, which placed an expectant and a rival beside each petty throne, could not fail to be the source of constant disturbance among fiery and jealous

natures.

The state of society which was practically so lawless was not however without the idea or the forms of law. There were Brehons, or professional judges, distinct from the chiefs, though probably not independent of them; a separation of the judicial from the political power which forms an important step in the civil development of a people. The Brehon law, of which these judges were the oracles, appears to have been a precise and elaborate code, displaying something of that peculiar aptitude for the forms of legislation which the French Kelt has displayed in the Code Napoleon, and which may exist as an intellectual gift apart from the strong moral qualities which maintain personal right, liberty, and justice. The English Statutes denounce the Brehon

law as "no law, but a lewd custom;" and so, in truth, it was, when adopted, in place of the common law, by the degenerate English of the Pale: in itself it was a national code.

It is needless to say that the Eric, or pecuniary composition for blood, in place of capital or other punishment, which the Brehon law sanctioned, is the reproach of all primitive codes and of none. It is the first step from the license of savage revenge to the ordered justice of a regular law.

The legendary accounts of early Irish civilization glitter with gold and silver; and the time before the Conquest is looked back on as one of Utopian splendour and prosperity. The darkness of the present has lent brightness by contrast to the vista of the past. It is not in the evening waters of Lough Neagh alone that the oppressed and unhappy peasant

"Sees the Round Towers of other days

In the wave below him shining."

The power of hope is not extinguished in man: it turns to memory when it has no object of its own.

Among the Irish Kelts as well as among the Kelts of Gaul the products of fancy and ingenuity appear to have outrun the more substantial accessories of wealth and civilization. The only towns deserving of the name, as was before mentioned, appear to have been those of the Danes. Corn was grown; but, partly from the nature of the climate, in small quantities. The fondness for drinks sweetened with honey gave bee-keeping an important place among the articles of Brehon law, as well as among the germs of peaceful life and civiliza

tion. Commerce had raised her head, and the productions of a pastoral country were bartered for the wines of Spain and France: but the Irish do not seem themselves to have ventured on the sea, though they had coracles for the lake and river; and probably the chief traders were the Danes. The gold which museums of Irish ornaments display in such surprising quantities, appears, according to the best opinions, to have been gathered from the streams of Wicklow. Whether coined money was of early introduction seems to be still a moot point. Building with hewn stone and cement was confined to ecclesiastical edifices. Perhaps the very facility with which stone was obtained, while it has caused the island to be strewn with the wrecks of hasty habitations of different ages, may, by rendering it unnecessary to hew stone from the quarry, have checked the growth of regular architecture. The savage requires to be driven to his first tasks by nature.

On the other hand, the ancient Irish ornaments display singular taste and skill. The same qualities are displayed in the well-known forms of the Irish crosses. They emerge again after an eclipse of centuries in the beautiful carvings with which the native genius of Irish artists has adorned the Museum of Trinity College Dublin and the Museum at Oxford. Nor can it easily be doubted that an aspiration after the beautiful conspired with the object of security to produce the taper and graceful forms of the Round Towers. The play of religious fancy shews itself in the groups of Seven Churches which so frequently mark holy spots. But this cunning of hand and this fancy need to be wedded to some

higher gifts of creative power in order to raise them to the level of Greek and Italian art.

The legendary authors of Greek civilization, Orpheus, Mercury, Amphion, all had for their talisman the harp. Giraldus shews that he is not a bigoted libeller of the Irish by the praises which he bestows upon their incomparable skill in music 9. The bards, the ancient brethren of the Druids, had preserved the sanctity of their order into Christian times. They were trained by a long course of study and probation for the sacred order. The highest reverence attended them, and their malison was almost as terrible as the curse of a priest; so that the race of a man whom a bard had laid under his ban were supposed to emit from their bodies the evil odour of the accursed. These are the germs of intellectual life, germs which are small, but pregnant with mighty consequences. This is the faint beginning of that literary empire which culminated in the apotheosis of Voltaire. The bards in Ireland, as in Wales, being the guardians of national feeling and tradition, were priests of the national cause, and, as such, were banned by the Statutes of the conquering race. When, towards the close of the last century, the spirit of Irish independence woke again, though in a somewhat factitious form, two or three of the old wandering race of harpers were found, and brought to a patriotic music-meeting at Belfast. These, the last survivors of their race, delivered the harp of Ireland to Thomas Moore, in whose hands it became a powerful awakener of political sympathy for an injured

a Top. Hib., c. 11.

and unhappy nation, and assisted in no slight degree the cause of justice and emancipation.

We Te come to the Conquest, the point at which the patriot historians of Ireland raise a death-wail over the fortunes of their country. Assuredly it was the beginning of a long train of almost unexampled calamities, not to Ireland alone, but to both nations. If retribution is not, as some have maintained, the great law of history, history bears unfailing witness to the certainty of retribution.

There are certain philosophers, of a somewhat coldly scientific school, who look upon man as a creature to be organized; and who, if a conquest tends to bring a schismatical civilization within that more than Papal uniformity which they desire to impose on the world, are inclined to regard it with unmixed complacency. There is another school, of which M. Augustin Thierry is the great exponent, which draws no distinction between the international morality of the twelfth century and the nineteenth, but condemns the enterprises of Norman conquerors as vehemently as it would condemn a rapacious attack made by one civilized nation on another at the present day. This school, moreover, takes the cause of all conquered nationalities under its generous protection; and loves independence so much, and uniformity so little, that it would not only restore the Heptarchy, if it could, but the Ancient Britons.

Thus much must be admitted: there was an era when, if conquest was not moral, it was in the eyes of all men far less immoral than it is now, and when it served the object, which we can scarcely regard as