gland the Celtic character was
moulded by the power and discipline of the Roman Empire. To Ireland
this modifying influence never extended; and we find the Ulster chiefs
who fought for their territories with English viceroys 280 years ago
very little different from the men who followed Brennus to the sack
of Home, and encountered the legions of Julius Caesar on the plains of
Gaul.

Mr. Prendergast observes, in the introduction to his 'Cromwellian
Settlement' that when the companions of Strongbow landed in the reign
of Henry II. they found a country such as Caesar had found in Gaul
1200 years before. A thousand years had passed over the island without
producing the slightest social progress--'the inhabitants divided
into tribes on the system of the clansmen and chiefs, without a common
Government, suddenly confederating, suddenly dissolving, with Brehons,
Shaunahs, minstrels, bards, and harpers, in all unchanged, except that
for their ancient Druids they had got Christian priests. Had the
Irish remained honest pagans, Ireland perhaps had remained unconquered
still. Round the coast strangers had built seaport towns, either
traders from the Carthaginian settlements in Spain, or outcasts from
their own country, like the Greeks that built Marseilles. At the time
of the arrival of the French and Flemish adventurers from Wales, they
were occupied by a mixed Danish and French population, who supplied
the Irish with groceries, including the wines of Poitou, the latter in
such abundance that they had no need of vineyards.'

If vineyards had been needed, we may be sure they would not have been
planted, for the Irish Celts planted nothing. Neither did they build,
except in the simplest and rudest way, improving their architecture
from age to age no more than the beaver or the bee. Mr. Prendergast
is an able, honest, and frank writer; yet there is something amusingly
Celtic in the flourish with which he excuses the style of palaces in
which the Irish princes delighted to dwell. 'Unlike England,' he says,
'then covered with castles on the heights, where the French gentlemen
secured themselves and their families against the hatred of the churls
and villains, as the English peasantry were called, the dwellings
of the Irish chiefs were of wattles or clay. It is for robbers and
foreigners to take to rocks and precipices for security; for native
rulers, there is no such fortress _as justice and humanity_.' This
is very fine, but surely