OF).
ROBERT EMMETT (PORTRAIT OF).
DANIEL O'CONNELL, M.P. (SKETCH OF).
LESSER ILLUSTRATIONS (AT ENDS OF CHAPTERS).
CROMLECH ON HOWTH.
MOUTH OF SEPULCHRAL CHAMBER AT DOWTH.
ST. KEVIN'S CHURCH.
CORMAC'S CHAPEL AND ROUND TOWER.
ROUND TOWER AT DEVENISH.
SOUTH WINDOW OF ST. CAEMIN'S CHURCH.
FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT.
TRIM CASTLE.
FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT.
INITIAL LETTER (FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS).
ST. PATRICK'S BELL.
INITIAL LETTER (FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS).
CINERARY URN.
TARA BROOCH.
DOORWAY OF ST. CAEMIN'S CHURCH.
SHRINE OF ST. PATRICK'S BELL.
ST. COLUMBA'S ORATORY.
INITIAL LETTER (FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS).
CRYPT OF CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL.

THE STORY OF IRELAND.

I.

PRIMEVAL IRELAND.

"It seems to be certain," says the Abbe McGeoghehan, "that Ireland
continued uninhabited from the Creation to the Deluge." With this
assurance to help us on our onward way I may venture to supplement it by
saying that little is known about the first, or even about the second,
third, and fourth succession of settlers in Ireland. At what precise
period what is known as the Scoto-Celtic branch of the great Aryan stock
broke away from its parent tree, by what route its migrants travelled,
in what degree of consanguinity it stood to the equally Celtic race or
races of Britain, what sort of people inhabited Ireland previous to the
first Aryan invasion--all this is in the last degree uncertain, though
that it was inhabited by some race or races outside the limits of that
greatest of human groups seems from ethnological evidence to be
perfectly clear.

When first it dawns upon us through that thick darkness which hangs
about the birth of all countries--whatever their destiny--it was a
densely wooded and scantily peopled island "lying a-loose," as old
Campion, the Elizabethan historian, tells us, "upon the West Ocean,"
though his further assertion that "in shape it resembleth an egg, plain
on the sides, and not reaching forth to the sea in nooks and elbows of
Land as Brittaine doeth"--cannot be said to be quite geographically
accurate--the last part of the description referring evidently to the
east coast, the only one with which, like most of his countrymen, he was
at that time familiar.

Geographically, then, and topographically it was no doubt in much the
same state as the greater part of it remained up to the middle or end of
the sixteenth century, a wild, tangled, roadless land, that is to say,
shaggy with forests, abounding