this before we close. The following exquisite piece will be understood in contrast with one of the previous extracts. "The little Black Rose shall be red at last :- "The Silk of the Kine shall rest at last;- In a wind o'er the stone plain of Athenry."-p. 293. But the most beautiful and, in our judgment, the most magnificent piece in the entire Third Part is what may be regarded as a poetic resumé of the past religious history of Ireland, with a half dreaming, half prophetic forecasting of her future destiny, entitled, "All Hallows; or the Monk's Dream.' The introduction is highly poetical. "I trod once more the place of tombs: Waved, gusty, with a silver gleam: The graves were troubled all around; The monks ascended from the ground." In this vision, which rises before the eye of the seer, is shadowed forth the entire story of his country's long ages of suffering and humiliation. "From sin absolved, redeem'd from tears, There stood they, beautiful and calm, The brethren of a thousand years, With lifted brows and palm to palm! On heaven they gazed in holy trance; "By angels borne the Holy Rood Encircled thrice the church-yard bound: With bleeding feet but foreheads crown'd; Which angels sang when Christ was born, Shook with the first white flakes of morn. "Down on the earth my brows I laid; Behold these prostrate shrines and stones! 'Can Spirit lift once more these bones?'' But his doubting faint-heartedness is speedily rebuked. Still sleeps on yon expectant shore. Send forth, sad Isle, thy reaper bands! For thee thy sons shall weave the crown.' "They spake; and like a cloud down sank And I that peace celestial drank Which shines but o'er the seas of tears. Thy mission flash'd before me plain, O thou by many woes anneal'd! And I discern'd how axe and chain Had thy great destinies sign'd and seal'd! "That seed which grows must seem to die:- Beneath Vesuvian ashes hid." : And even the miseries of his country-her baffled hopes and ineffectual struggles-are shown in their true significance;-historical evidences that it is only from God the redemption is to come. "For this cause by a power divine Each temporal aid was frustrated: In vain they fought in vain they bled, Sank ill-starr'd Mary, erring James:- "Arise, long stricken! mightier far Are they that fight for God and thee By mists the sense exterior breeds, From all thine altars pleads thy cause! "Hope of my country! House of God! Can God forget that race at home?"-p. 295-9. We cannot help thinking that this is the very ideal of genuine religious poetry. It would be indeed difficult to condense more happily into a few stanzas the world of thoughts which must crowd upon any religious mind in contemplating this truly wonderful Institution, which has grown up, silently and almost by miracle, in the midst of us; which seems to realize, in a generation of worldliness and intellectual pride, all the marvels of the ages of Faith, and whose holy emissaries have already spread themselves over almost every region of earth, carrying to the most distant countries that sacred symbol which their fathers" the brethren of a thousand years"—had followed through ages of persecution, "With bleeding feet but foreheads crowned." How wonderfully does this new growth of faith in Ireland realize Mr. de Vere's beautiful illustration: "The seed which grows must seem to die." To human eye it was indeed dead in Ireland; and, as far as depended on earthly influences, so it must have remained. But, to follow out Mr. de Vere's illustration, "the seed but slept on the expectant shore," and the tempests which, to man's eye, had seemed to lay the shore waste and desolate, only served in God's wise and holy designs to carry that seed to other lands-to renew in our country the mission of mercy which had once been her highest prerogative. And, while Ireland seems destined, in the new generation of" sowers going out to sow their seed," to "assert and pass her old renown," she may also cherish the humble hope that the blessing of which she is thus made the instrument to others will return tenfold to her own sorrow-stricken bosom. "Blessed the winds that waft them forth ART. X.-Lectures on the MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History, delivered at the Catholic University of Ireland, during the Sessions of 1855 and 1856, by Eugene O'Curry, M.R.I.A., Professor of Irish History and Archæology, in the Catholic University of Ireland. Dublin and London: James Duffy. 1861. THE HE publication of a reliable analytical account of the manuscripts extant in the Irish language, has long been anxiously desired by students of history and philology, on the Continent as well as in Great Britain and Ireland. The only work hitherto published on this subject was Edward O'Reilly's "Account of Irish Writers," printed in 1820, and professing to give a chronological catalogue of all the productions in the Gaelic language, with which its compiler was acquainted, or relative to which he possessed or could acquire any information. O'Reilly deserved very high merit for the manner in which he executed this work, when we take into consideration the difficulties which he had to encounter, and the low state of native Irish learning in his day; but it is now admitted that, although skilled in modern Gaelic, he was comparatively unacquainted with the language of the Irish documents of the more remote times. The knowledge requisite for the complete and satisfactory elucidation of these obscure monuments may be said to have been in abeyance since the close of the seventeenth century, when the last hereditary professors of Gaelic learning passed away, and its recovery in our own time, is to be ascribed to the labours of the present accurate and practical school of Irish Archæology, the foundation of which was laid by the establishment of the Antiquarian section of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland. The first movement of this department was to engage the most competent Gaelic scholars to examine the various accessible Irish manuscripts and documents with the object of compiling an historic topography of Ireland, and the value of the materials existing in the old language of the country, for such a work was displayed in the Ordnance Memoir of the parish of Templemore, in the county of Derry, published in 1837. After the abandonment of the projected Government publication of the County Memoirs, the historical value of VOL L.- No. C. 14 |