d the Bishop's saintly end.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Glimpses of Social Life in the Seventeenth Century--Literature and
Literary Men--Keating--the Four Masters--Colgan--Ward--Usher--Ware--
Lynch--Trade--Commerce depressed by the English--Fairs--Waterford
Rugs--Exportation of Cattle forbidden--State of Trade in the Principal
Towns--Population--Numbers employed in different Trades--Learned
Professions--Physicians--Establishment of their College in
Dublin--Shopkeepers--Booksellers--Coffee-houses--Clubs--Newspapers--
Fashionable Churches--Post-houses and Post-offices established--
Custom-house--Exchange--Amusements--Plays at the Castle--The First
Theatre set up in Werburgh-street--Domestics Manners and Dress--
Food-A Country Dinner Party in Ulster.

[A.D. 1600-1700.]

Notwithstanding the persecutions to which the Irish had been subjected
for so many centuries, they preserved their love of literature, and the
cultivated tastes for which the Celt has been distinguished in all ages.
Indeed, if this taste had not existed, the people would have sunk into
the most degraded barbarism; for education was absolutely forbidden, and
the object of the governing powers seems to have been to reduce the
nation, both intellectually and morally, as thoroughly as possible. In
such times, and under such circumstances, it is not a little remarkable
to find men devoting themselves to literature with all the zest of a
freshman anticipating collegiate distinctions, while surrounded by
difficulties which would certainly have dismayed, if they did not
altogether crush, the intellects of the present age. I have already of
the mass of untranslated national literature existing country and in
continental libraries. These treasures of mental labour are by no means
confined to one period of our history; but it could scarcely be expected
that metaphysical studies or the fine arts could flourish at a period
when men's minds were more occupied with the philosophy of war than with
the science of Descartes, and were more inclined to patronize a new
invention in the art of gunnery, than the _chef d'oeuvre_ of a limner or
sculptor. The Irish language was the general medium of conversation in
this century. No amount of Acts of Parliament had been able to repress
its use, and even the higher classes of English settlers appear to have
adopted it by preference. Military proclamations were issued in this
language;[512] or if the Saxon tongue were used, it was tra