in 1189. We must remember that
every one of these represents, and by its variations of style indicates,
an unbroken life through several centuries. The death-knell of the old
life of the abbeys and priories, in Ireland as in England, was struck in
the year 1537 by the law which declared their lands forfeited to the
crown; as the result of the religious controversies of the beginning of
the sixteenth century.

XIII.

THE TRIUMPH OF FEUDALISM.

A.D. 1603-1660.

The confiscation of the abbey lands, as the result of religious
controversy, closed an epoch of ecclesiastical life in Ireland, which we
cannot look back on without great regret for the noble and beautiful
qualities it brought forth in such abundance. There is a perennial charm
and fascination in the quiet life of the old religious houses--in the
world, yet not of the world--which appeals to aesthetic and moral
elements in our minds in equal degree. From their lovely churches and
chapter-houses the spirits of the old monks invite us to join them in an
unworldly peace on earth, a renewal of the golden age, a life full of
aspiration and self-forgetfulness, with all the burdens of egotism
laid aside.

Yet after all is said, we can hardly fail to see that out of the
spoliation and scattering of the religious orders much good came. There
was a danger that, like the older indigenous schools which they
supplanted, these later foundations might divide the nation in two, all
things within their consecrated walls being deemed holy, while all
without was unregenerate, given up to wrath. A barrier of feelings and
hopes thus springing up, tends to harden from year to year, till at last
we have a religious caste grown proud and arrogant, and losing all trace
of the spiritual fervor which is its sole reason for being.

The evils which surround a wealthy church are great and easily to be
understood, nor need we lay stress on them. There is, indeed, cause for
wonder in the spectacle of the followers of him "who had not where to
lay his head" become, in the Middle Ages, the greatest owners of land in
Europe; and we can see how temptations and abuses without number might
and did often arise from this very fact. Ambition, the desire of wealth,
the mere love of ease, led many to profess a religious life who had
never passed through that transformation of will and understanding which
is the essence of religion. The very purpose of religion was forgotten,
or allowed to be hid