onmacnois on the Shannon, The records of
the construction of some of them in the tenth and eleventh centuries
are still extant, and this is conclusive. There are today about
seventy Round Towers in Ireland, and many have been destroyed.

The pillar towers of Ireland, how wondrously they stand
By the lakes and rushing rivers through the valleys of our land;
In mystic file, through the isle, they lift their heads sublime,
These gray old pillar temples--these conquerors of time.

Here was placed the holy chalice that held the sacred wine,
And the gold cross from the altar, and the relics from the shrine,
And the mitre shining brighter with its diamonds than the east,
And the crozier of the pontiff, and the vestments of the priest.

_D.F. MacCarthy_.

This was the time when the High Crosses of Ireland were carved and
set up. They vie with the Round Towers in interest and in the display
of skill. What the towers have in perfection, masonry and
construction, the crosses have in artistic carving and symbolic
design. No two crosses are alike; they are as varied as the clouds in
an Irish sky or the pebbles on the beach or the flowers in a garden.
They were carved in reverence by those who knew and esteemed their
art, and lavished all their skill and knowledge on what they most
valued and treasured. They were not set up as grave-marks
merely--theirs was a higher and loftier mission. They were raised in
places where some great event or period was to be commemorated--they
were erected where some early disciple of the Cross could stand
beside one of them and from any panel could tell the foundation of
the Faith, for there in stone was story after story, from the Old
Testament and the New, that gave him his text, and so, as at the
Cross of the Scriptures at Clonmacnois, a missioner could preach on
every recurring holy day from Christmas to Christmas, with ever his
text in stone before him. Many a broken and mutilated cross has been
set up in Ireland in recent years, proving that the heart of the
Gael, no matter how rent and broken, is still inclined to bind up the
broken wounds of her past glories.

With the religious orders there came to Ireland a widespread desire
to add something to the older sanctuaries of the Gael, to widen their
borders and strengthen their cords, and so the abbeys were founded.
Here and there we find them still