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 you-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 Here,

is the palace at Lambeth. 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 for feited 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 acknow. ledgments, 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.

Ar 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

2 A

of uneducated minds was of daily occurrence. Where the means were so obvious, and the ends which might appear, however imperfectly, to be attained by them, so important, it is scarcely probable that they would not be used. Among the old Irish in particular, the popular taste for fiction, the enthusiastic and imaginative turn of the national mind, the remote situation of the country, out of the way of dispute, and of that enquiry which attends on argument, the repugnance to moral teaching which long familiarity with strife and bloodshed cannot but have created among the mass of the people-all these were concurrent inducements to the ecclesiastic to indulge the prevalent taste of his disciples, and where he could not combat their ignorance with legitimate weapons to turn their imaginations against their dispositions, and excite at least a pious sentiment where he had failed in raising a religious feeling. Such, probably, was the first step to superstition, a step fatal as it was false; for, of all other appetites none grows with what it feeds on more ravenously than this craving after the supernatural, and he who has ministered to it once, must be prepared with a continual supply of similar aliment, if he would not see all influence and office taken out of his hands and seized into those of more inventive providors. Whether the first step was provoked by the people, or volunteered by the clergy, the consequences were the same. Whether superstition begot ignorance, or ignorance begot superstition, it is certain that each was infinitely reproduced and multiplied in the issue.

It is not pretended to fix the date of the first fable, nor to trace the reciprocal effects of appetite and indulgence throughout the process of accumulating folly; but to take the result as it is found in the whole collection of legendary traditions, as received in Ireland at the time when this accumulation had reached its height. This period may be fixed at some time before the sixteenth century, after which the credit of these fictions had materially declined, although their general collection was not much attended to till about a century later.

John of Teignmouth, who flourished in 1366, seems to have been the first to make a regular collection of the lives of Irish saints, whom he includes with those of Britain, in that "great magazine," from which Capgrave, in 1526,

.

borrowed most part of his Nova Legenda. Capgrave was followed by Messingham, who, in 1624, published at Paris his Florilegium Sanctorum Hiberniæ, a work which, in like manner, furnished the materials of Dempster's Ecclesiastical History of the Scots, three years after. Dempster was a determined pirate where the plunder was a saint, and appropriated to his own country many of the brightest ornaments of the Florilegy. "This prize," says Nicholson, "was retaken with reprisals in abundance by John Colgan, an Irish friar mendicant, and divinity lecturer in the University of Louvain, who published three large volumes of the lives of some hundreds of saints that are supposed to have been born or bred (or at least that lived some years) in the kingdom of Ireland. The two former of these, though last printed, he named Triadis Thaumaturge, sive Divorum Patricii, Columbæ, et Brigidæ, trium veteris seu majoris Scotiæ seu Hiberniæ Sanctorum Insulæ, communium patronum, Acta (Fol. Louvain, 1647.) Into these he has transcribed all the (long and short) lives that he could meet with, either in print or manuscript, which had been written of these three famous contemporary saints; saving that he has contented himself with laying before his readers seven or eight of the most bulky of those of St. Patrick, which were all compiled by the apostle's own disciples, and which (he verily believes) contain all that's to be found in sixty-six by other hands. His third volume is called Acta Sanctorum Veteris et Majoris Scotiæ, &c. (Fol. Lou vain, 1645.) In this he has hooked in most of the old holy men and women in England and Scotland: so that even Dempster himself could not be more intent on multiplying the Scotch army of saints and martyrs, than Colgan of raising recruits for that of his own native country, &c.” As a key to the ancient topography of the country, Colgan's annotations are invaluable; but his Acta include the lives of those saints only whose festivals fall before the end of the month of March, so that the lives of the Irish saints whose feasts fall during the remaining threefourths of the year are still to be collected. It is said that the remainder of Colgan's work still exists in MSS. at Louvain. From the inestimable importance of the notes in Irish topography, it is much to be desired that these MS. collections should be given to

the world. Of the probable value of the text, an estimate will be formed from the references to Colgan, throughout the remainder of this paper. For the lives of those saints which are not included in the above works, recourse must be had to the general Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists, where they will be found under the dates of their proper festivals. Their numbers were immense. Archbishop Usher enumerates over 650 Irish saints from the year 433 to the year 664. In the martyrology of Engus are enumerated 62 classes of homonymous Irish saints. Among these are 34 Mochumii, 37 Moluani, 43 Laserian's, 58 Mochuans, and above 200 of the name of Colman. Colgan also mentions 23 Columba's, 84 Columbanus's, and about 120 Colman's. In point of numbers, then, Ireland is plainly entitled to her title of insula sanctorum, and that her claim to the same distinction, on the ground of the lives and actions of this host of holy men, ought not to be disputed, will, we think, appear equally plainly from the following summary of the Acta of some of the most distinguished of them.

Before entering on such a mass of materials, it will be necessary to adopt some classification. The most natural division seems to be into fables of direct suggestion, and fables of the imagination The process by which an accident, a chance coincidence, or a dexterous feat may be magnified into a miracle, in superstitious times, even without the sanction of the person to whom such powers are attributed, is so familiar that we need not dwell on its Causes, but proceed to mark its effects by a few instances taken at random. It is recorded by Cogitosus, (a writer, it is said, of the seventh century,) in his life of Brigid, that, having distributed the produce of her churning among the poor, she had a second gathering of butter miraculously vouchsafed to her: (vit. Brigid. c. 2.) Here is nothing impossible, yet this is associated with alleged miracles the most stupendous. The latter were most probably believed on the credit of the former, and here we have an instance of the rise of a miraculous reputation. Of the same character are the following: Brigid divides her suet with the dog, yet the dumpling is nothing les sened thereby. (ibid. c. 4.) She takes three milkings a day from her cow to provide sweet milk for the bishop, and

obtains as much by these three milkings of one cow, as the ordinary milkings of three cows would yield. (c. 6.) She makes a hungry dog abstain from clean pudding. (c. 14.) This last exercise of power will probably remind some readers of the anecdote of a distinguished controversialist and dog fancier of the present day, whose greyhounds eat no fleshmeat on Fridays. Again, St. Columba changes crab apples to sweet pippins. (Adamman vit. Columb. c. 23.)' He draws thorns to admiration. (c. 112.) He has wonderful success in recovering stolen cattle. (c. 113.) He sails against wind and tide. (c. 22.-So little idea had the old Irish of sailing on a wind, that an omen of the fall of Galway was drawn from the fact of the English fleet being seen beating to windward in the bay, on their first arrival on that coast.-The anecdote is told, if we recollect right, in the annals of Innisfallen.) He stays a bloody flux, (c. 18.) He restores a wife's affections to her husband, (c. 41.) &c. &c. It were idle to accumulate instances of the same sort from the lives of other saints, where any one who possesses sufficient curiosity may find them on almost every subject from the milking of a sticking cow, (vit. Maidoc. c. 23,) to the procuring of maternal joys for a long barren matron, (vit. Columbani apud Messingham.)

A few of these, whether in example or in practice, suffice. For, as soon as a miraculous reputation has been established by the success of any fable however trifling, succeeding legendwriters have nothing to fear from scepticism in adding whatever more stupendous wonders their learning or their imagination can enable them to adapt. As might naturally be expected, the miracles of the Old and New Testaments are those, which, after the first establishment of a character for Thaumaturgy, furnish the most numerous, because the most readily suggested examples. To enum erate the various imitations, repetitions, and exaggerations of Scripture miracles which abound among these legends, would be a tedious as well as a disagreeable task. Suffice it to say, that there is no character of Scripture history so exalted as not to have, among these creatures of imagination, a rival or rivals in the most stupendous exercises of divine power. A note is subjoined in which the necessary references will be found to enable such readers as