very learned foreigners to be the most ancient and best preserved dialect of the old Celtic tongue of the Gauls and Celtiberians; and, at the same time, the most useful for investigating and clearing up the antiquities of the Celtic nations in general." I shall only add, that the present very low state of this department of Irish literature may be conjectured from the prices now affixed to this work, and that of MacCurtin's, already mentioned. In a recent London catalogue, I observe the two works together, advertised for sale at the enormous price of eight guineas and a half!

In but few words, the retrospect of this century is much more painful than even that of the preceding. By the year 1799 or 1800, it is difficult to say how many editions of the Scriptures there had been in English. Independently of portions and editions with exposition, I have numbered 290; but, as if the Native Irish were reserved to stand out in contrast to even every Celtic tribe in the kingdom, by this time there had been printed and circulated in Welsh not fewer than twelve editions of the Bible, and as many of the New Testament, separately, amounting to at least 120,000, of which 75,000 Bibles and 14,000 Testaments had been printed during this very century,-3000 Bibles and 32,500 Testaments, in Gaelic, had been printed during the same period. Even in Manx there had been thousands, and all this before the Bible Society had been thought of: while, for the Native Irish, there had not been printed one single copy during the whole century!

At length, in the very close of the eighteenth, or rather the opening of the nineteenth century, benevolent feeling having come into more lively exercise, a better day seems to have begun to dawn on this long, long neglected people. The time in which their best interest will be pursued, as it relates to the improvement of their mind, is surely now at hand. The time in which their vernacular tongue was thus treated has passed away; and, assuredly, if “the English interest," in every sense of the term, is ever to be promoted, such policy and such neglect have passed away for ever.

To this better day for the aborigines of Ireland, various circumstances have contributed their share of influence, and no candid writer would willingly pass over any one of them. Whatever may be the thought of some of his

positions, the earlier writings of General Vallancey,-the intended legacy of the late Henry Flood, Esq., which will be again noticed in the next section,-the formation of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, now merged in the Iberno-Celtic, -one or two papers in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, each of these has had, at least, some influence in awakening attention to the language itself. In the opening of this century, also, one is cheered by observing several publications in Irish upon Irish ground, such as the Irish Grammars of Dr William Neilson of Dundalk, of Dr Paul O'Bryan, Irish Professor of Maynooth, of William Haliday, Esq. of Dublin, the Synoptic Tables of Mr Patrick Lynch, and, finally, the Irish-English Dictionary by Mr Edward O'Reilly.*

Dr Whitley Stokes of Trinity College, Dublin, began by exciting attention to the necessity for printing the Scriptures in Irish; and Dr Daniel Dewar also lent his influence in favour of the language. In 1814 the present writer visited Ireland, and, in " a Memorial on behalf of the Native Irish, with a view to their moral and religious improvement, through the medium of their own language," endeavoured to plead their cause, with what success it is not for him to say; but the same feelings led him to an argument which was printed afterwards in England and Ireland in favour of the Irish character being used, not the Roman; and to a brief memorial respecting the diffusion of the Scriptures, particularly in the Celtic or Iberian dialects, in 1819. This last was intended as illustrative of the prodigious inequality of supply already printed for these tribes. It proved, that while one party, the Welsh, were attended to, and furnished with every variety, both as to the type and size of volume, the Irish were not impartially considered. It certainly was not without its effect, though it only showed that nothing was to be done, without exhibiting our long and strange neglect in the most glaring points of view.

In 1794, Dr Stokes had published Luke and the Acts in Irish, with parallel columns in English, and in 1806 the

*There was one native of Ireland, Philip Fitzgibbon, who died at Kilkenny in April, 1792, who is said to have been esteemed as a mathematician and an Irish scholar. His Irish manuscripts he left to the Rev. Mr O'Donnell, among which there was an English and Irish Dictionary, contained in about 400 quarto pages. With his pen the author had, in imitation of printing, executed every word either in roman or italic characters; but there is a singular omission, the letter S, and that he appeared to have entirely forgotten!-Ryan's Worthies, IL. 131.

four Gospels and the Acts. In 1811, the New Testament, and in 1817, the Bible, in Irish, were printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society; but all these were in the Roman letter, and in the two first even the orthography of the language was interfered with. The question as to the expediency, nay the necessity and importance of using the character in which the language had always been printed of old, began to be understood by all who had paid proper attention to the subject: several small tracts and portions of the Scriptures have been printed in it,—and now at last, in 1828, one edition of the Bible complete, in its appropriate character, has left the press.

Such then, and in such an important department, is nearly all that can be said with regard to the Native Irish ever since the revival of letters and the invention of printing! The benevolence of a few intelligent private individuals, assisted by natives at home, working against both wind and tide, the struggles of some of the Native Irish themselves abroad, fill up the wide space of more than three hundred and fifty years since the art of printing, or of more than two hundred and fifty years since Irish types and a printing-press were sent across St George's Channel!

After so long a night,-in coming, as we hope, to the morning of a better day, amidst a few primary exertions in their favour for the last ten or fifteen years,-the propensity to self-complacency in the present age must indeed be very strong, if there is any hazard of it here. Yet I have heard it already said, that much is now doing for this people, and in their own language, and I am mistaken if something like this has not, more than once, got into print; but let all such expressions be now brought into comparison with what ought to be done for a population so extensive, and they will certainly not be repeated for some time to

come.

In this department of Books alone, to which the preceding pages have been chiefly devoted, very much indeed remains to be accomplished, and certain desiderata will be pointed out afterwards in conclusion. Meanwhile the previous section, and, above all, the existing state of this people, as still farther to be laid open, will, it is hoped, set all such measures as may be necessary in a light sufficiently strong; though even here there are certainly few men in the present day possessed of common humanity who will not be disposed to exclaim-" What a history of the past is this, compared with what it ought to have been!"

The best interests of the kingdom are interwoven with the moral condition of any substantial quota of its population; and it is only a strong conviction that the present state of the Native Irish embraces an object of far greater magnitude and importance than has ever yet been admitted, which has led to the publication of this volume.

"Every man is more speedily instructed by his own language, than by any other." "He that voluntarily continues ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces; as to him that should extinguish the tapers of a light-house might justly be imputed the calamities of shipwreck."

"To obscure, upon motives merely political, the light of revelation, is a practice reserved for the reformed." JOHNSON.

SECTION II.

SCHOOLS OF LEARNING

Of early and modern date, including some account of the attempts to employ the Irish tongue as a branch of Education at home, and of the Schools either founded by the Native Irish, or at their instance, for their Education abroad.

"which deserve an exact

"THE ages," said Dr Johnson, inquiry are those times, for such there were, when Ireland was the school of the west, the quiet habitation of sanctity and learning." By learning, of course, such a man intended the learning of the day as far as it had gone, although how much he involved in the term he has not informed us. I am perfectly aware that this department of our national history is regarded by some only with a smile, as one would some puzzled skein of silk, which it requires great patience and fine fingers to rectify. It may be so; but from the length which even the writer has gone, at intervals snatched from other avocations, he cannot but believe, that so far as any man, possessed of learning and patient research, shall proceed in a candid examination of the Irish remains abroad and at home, if the times are considered, at least the ancient school of Armagh, if not one or two others, will rise in point of character. At present the generality say, and with some truth, we have only heard the fame thereof with our ears." Precision, accuracy, and confirmation are required, and especially for those who seem disposed to question every affirmation; while certain Irishmen more deeply read, and naturally interested in their past history, cling with fondness to these recollections of ancient times,-by some they are cherished, as one remembers the singing birds in spring, which now sing no more.

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The foundation of the school of Armagh is to be traced to a very remote period, in the judgment of those who are partial to Irish antiquity, while this seems to be little more than conjecture in the estimation of others; but of its early existence there can be no question. Insignificant in its commencement, like every similar school of learning in