n had done or been. France has a permanent
commission charged to watch over her antiquities. She annually spends
more in publishing books, maps, and models, in filling her museums and
shielding her monuments from the iron clutch of time, than all the
roads in Leinster cost. It is only on time she needs to keep watch. A
French peasant would blush to meet his neighbour had he levelled a
Gaulish tomb, crammed the fair moulding of an abbey into his wall, or
sold to a crucible the coins which tell that a Julius, a Charlemagne,
or a Philip Augustus swayed his native land. And so it is everywhere.
Republican Switzerland, despotic Austria, Prussia and Norway, Bavaria
and Greece are all equally precious of everything that exhibits the
architecture, sculpture, rites, dress, or manners of their
ancestors--nay, each little commune would guard with arms these local
proofs that they were not men of yesterday. And why should not Ireland
be as precious of its ruins, its manuscripts, its antique vases, coins,
and ornaments, as these French and German men--nay, as the English, for
they, too, do not grudge princely grants to their museums and
restoration funds.

This island has been for centuries either in part or altogether a
province. Now and then above the mist we see the whirl of Sarsfield's
sword, the red battle-hand of O'Neill, and the points of O'Connor's
spears; but 'tis a view through eight hundred years to recognise the
Sunburst on a field of liberating victory. Reckoning back from
Clontarf, our history grows ennobled (like that of a decayed house),
and we see Lismore and Armagh centres of European learning; we see our
missionaries seizing and taming the conquerors of Europe, and, farther
still, rises the wizard pomp of Eman and Tara--the palace of the Irish
Pentarchy. And are we the people to whom the English (whose fathers
were painted savages when Tyre and Sidon traded with this land) can
address reproaches for our rudeness and irreverence? So it seems. The
_Athenaeum_ says:--

"It is much to be regretted that the society lately established in
England, having for its object the preservation of British
antiquities, did not extend its design over those of the sister
island, which are daily becoming fewer and fewer in number. That
the gold ornaments which are so frequently found in various parts
of Ireland should be melted down for the sake of the very pure gold
of which they are composed, is scarce