The probability is, that the Danes brought more illumination to Ireland than they carried away; and, though succeeding ages have marked their horror of these northern warriors, it does not appear that the cotemporary Irish, during the three centuries of their occupation, partook in any great degree of this sentiment: for, from the great Brien Boroimhe, down to the meanest of his tributaries, almost every native prince had at some time or other sought their alliance, and profited by their arms. In certain stages of society a maritime invader must, in many respects, be superior to the remote islanders he attacks.

To construct ships, and navigate unknown and boisterous seas, argues not only spirit and enterprize, but considerable progress in the mechanical arts. The northern wars of Charlemagne must have carried much comparative civilization in their train; but the military and political superiority of the Normans-a branch of the same race of sea-kings as that which invaded Ireland, is matter of record and notoriety, and replaces conjecture with acknowledged fact. The native Irish were never either a commercial or a maritime people ;1 and, on the showing of their records and chronicles, they received their northern invaders with a deference not altogether due to military success. They called them " Loch Lannaghi" (powerful at sea), Fionne Geinte" (or white Gentiles)," Fionne Gaill" (the fair or handsome strangers), and "Gottaice" (at least some of their tribes were so designated); and the latter name was in such estimation, that it was assumed (says Vallancey) as a surname by several Irish princes. Thus Mulruna Got O'Maelscuchlin (O'Macklin) was the presumptive heir to the throne of Tara in 977: Giolla Got was king of Carbury; and Donald Got M'Carthy was king of Munster in 1252. All the great maritime cities were built by the Danes. Of these, the most important were Cork and Dublin. In the time of Henry II. the king of Dublin was a Dane; and the northern part of the city to this day bears the Danish name, while the most cultivated part of the county is, to this day, called Fioun-gail, or Fingal. The language of the sea-kings still prevails on the coast of Wexford, and the barony of Forth is a living monument of their ancient power and supremacy. From their first invasion, in 795, till the 12th century, they were called lords or kings of nearly all the maritime districts; their aid was perpetually sought by contending dynasts; and the battle of Clontarf, so valiantly fought on both sides, though it left 4000 Danes dead on the field, did not deprive them of their long-possessed territories.

2

But whatever may have been the relative civilization of the Irish natives and their invaders, it is certain that the clergy, exposed to perpetual plunder, called on to arm on the occasion of every feud among the septs (whose chiefs took the name of kings), and engaged

minister at the Court of Denmark on the subject. All the Danish libraries, public and private, royal and ecclesiastical, were searched; but no manuscripts were found "qui eussent rapport à l'histoire ancienne d'Irelande."

Sir W. Petty.

"Oxmantown' or Ostman's town. This was the name (Ostmanns or Easterlings) by which the invaders designated themselves. Giraldus Cambrensis, Usher, Vallancey, and the other Irish antiquaries, have many pro's and con's concerning this name.

October, 1831.-VOL. II. NO. VI.

M

in an incessant warfare with the rude elements and ruder inhabitants of the unreclaimed island, contributed little or nothing to the civil history of their times. Whatever leisure or security they enjoyed, for intellectual pursuits, was given (according to the learned historian of the Irish church) to the monastic and legendary lore of the age-to the study and institution of rules for orders, rituals, litanies, canons, the quotation of scriptural texts, and of passages from the Fathers to the composition of hymns, and the lives and miracles of the saints then most in vogue. To St. Patrick, nothing is attributed but an epistle and a confession: yet what things might he have handed down to posterity concerning the state of Ireland, when, arriving on the coast of Wicklow, he took up his residence at Old Court, near Bray, whence he set forth on his mission to the court of the king of Leinster! A politico-historical work has indeed been attributed to St. Patrick by some antiquaries, which they call "Seanchas Mor" (the Great Antiquity)—a work in which he was assisted by three saints, three kings, and three bishops (called the Committee of Nine), and which was approved by the Fes of Timor. But even Dr. Lanigan denies the authenticity of this book. One of the earliest specimens of sacred biography was St. Patrick's own life; a metrical memoir, by Fiech, bishop of Sletty. It was written, I believe, in the seventh century, and is called Fiech's hymn. In the eighth century, the "illustrious Adamnan" wrote the life of St. Column Kill. In the tenth, a life of St. Patrick was written by Coeneachor (in Latin called " Probus"), who was "chief lecturer of the school of Slane, which college was built by the Danes in that town." The tripartite life, written by Jocelyn and Colgan, belongs to more advanced ages. All the saints, it is said, had their own biographers; while a band of sceptics, called Bolandists by the orthodox (from Father Boland their incredulous master), declare "that the whole Irish Sanctology is a compilation of fables of the 11th century;" and Dr. O'Connor (an orthodox divine) seems not to differ from this opinion. In a word, the very existence of St. Patrick is now doubted, or at least is bandied about from age to age, till Dr. Ledwich introduces his first appearance in Ireland with the Danes in the 9th century.1

Up to the period of the Danish invasion, the Church was more actively and usefully employed than some of her defenders will allow. They were the only agriculturists. Their gardens, vineyards, and bee-hives, opened an oasis in every desert in which they settled; and, though the Danish clergy of Dublin and the native clergy of Connaught were in perpetual contest for nearly half a century, it appears that their "apostolic blows and knocks" were not dealt in the defence of a dogma, or converted to reciprocal martyrdom. The mildness and true Christian philosophy of the Irish Church is best proved by their having had no martyrology to write.3 Still it is as

"He transforms St. Senanus into a river; St. Kevin into a rock; and St. Patrick, the great apostle of the nation, into a nonentity."-Ecclesiastical History of Ireland.

2 St. Domnach, who brought with him a swarm of bees from Wales, the first in Ireland, seems to have been amongst the most useful saints in the calendar. The monastic rules of Emly allowed a honeycomb, monthly, to each of the brothers.

3 In Ireland alone, Christianity was not propagated by blood. In a conversation

serted by the "defenders of the faith," who mistake national subser167 viency for national devotion, that even at this epoch of turbulence and discomfort, the overflow of learning and piety from Ireland was so overwhelming, that immense emigrations of the intellectual took place in the early part of the 12th century, and carried their fertilizing influence to the less cultivated societies of other lands. A specimen of these learned emigrants is cited in the person of "one Dermot, an Irishman," who, on his journey from Ireland to Jerusalem, wrote a discourse entitled " Itineraria, Latin," says the biographer who has rescued this Chateaubriand of (or "Exhortaria, ") "in good the 12th century from oblivion, studied the Fathers, or at least had read some of the works of St. "and showing that Dermot had Augustine." If, however, the saints and sages of Ireland did appear at this epoch in any numbers throughout Europe, other reasons might be assigned for the fact. The Church was in danger; the anarchical contests of the Pentarchy were daily increasing; and the Irish hierarchy, at all times the freest, the mildest, and the most independent in the Christian world,1 were exposed to the perpetual encroachments of the refractory laity.

The decrees of the celebrated Synod of Cashel were neglected and laughed at; the church of Armagh, the seat of the primacy, was burned, with several other inferior churches in the province; and the courageous denunciations of the clergy, though occasionally productive of some effect, were for the most part disregarded. All the combinations of a society so rude and clannish were then breaking up by their own pressure. life; and the brave, devoted, but infatuated people were the victims Every chief would be a king for of this fatal ambition, and the anti-national disunion it originated.3 At length, Roderick O'Connor assuming the supreme monarchy, and the several tributary princes taking part for or against him, as their interests or fancies dictated, plunged Ireland in a civil war but too

between an Italian monk and the Archbishop of Armagh, in 1185, the Italian reproached the Irish prelate, "that the Irish had no martyrs." "It is true that our nation may seem to you barbarous and rude; the Irish have The Bishop replied, never stretched their hands against the servants of God: but now a nation is come into this kingdom which knows how, and is accustomed to make martyrs. Henceforward Ireland shall, like other countries, have them."-(A prophecy fulfilled in the spirit, if not in the letter.) See Lynch's Cambrensis Eversus.

When Cardinal Papuro visited Ireland, in this century, he "ordered, in virtue of his apostolic authority, that the tithes should be paid;" but on this point he was very badly obeyed. It is certain that tithes were very little, if at all, exacted, till after the establishment of the English power. The Irish also refused the payment of the Peter's pence.

The Synod of Armagh had declared that the misfortunes then falling on Ireland were a judgment on the country, for the Irish purchasing from the English their children for slaves. The children were, it is said, liberated and sent back to their unnatural parents. Such were the good old times of "merry England and poetical Ireland.

3"But, that the reader unacquainted with Irish history may not be startled at such a multitude of kings appearing in one province, (Munster had nineteen ; alive and kicking, prince, or head of a large tribe or tract of country, amongst the Irish, carried the says an Irish ballad,) he is to know that every subordinate "all title of king, and did effectually exercise all sorts of sovereign power in his territories,-even that of making war and peace, not only with his equals, but even with the chief king of the whole province, whenever he found himself able to form a sufficient party against him."-Dissertation on the Laws of the Ancient Irish, by Gen. Vallancey.

favourable to a foreign invasion; and Roderick, deposing the king of Leinster, and seizing his province, (on pretence of avenging the injuries of his friend O'Ruara, prince of Brefny,) drove the desperate Toparch to seek restitution to power through the invasion of his country by the Anglo-Normans. From that moment Ireland fell under the power, and was subjected to the cruel policy of England, though not indeed under the control of the English government (which, even in the time of Elizabeth, was scarcely respected beyond the narrow limits of the pale); while the Irish Church became subject to the See of Rome. This was Ireland's first and greatest historical event, witnessed by cotemporary nations sufficiently enlightened to bear evidence to the facts. It was an event beyond the rhyming records of the family genealogist, or the lyric Cronan of the bard and it found an historian-a native historian who, an eyewitness of the event he relates, gave its details with a simplicity, an impartiality, and a freshness, rarely found in modern historiographers, from the falsifying De Thou to the eulogizing Voltaire. This Irishman was Maurice O'Regan, surnamed "the Latiner," whose own private story illustrates much of the peculiar state of Ireland at the time he wrote, and whose manner of transmitting his history to posterity is as curious as the story he relates. Some account of this author, and extracts from his works, may not be deemed out of place in an article consecrated to the subject of Irish Histories.

(To be continued.)

A PEEP INTO THE STOCK EXCHANGE.

THE Stock Exchange is known to the greater part of the public as a place where government funds and securities are bought and sold preparatory to their transfer at the Bank. Few perhaps are aware, that these real transactions of business constitute a very small part of the purposes to which its ten or twelve hundred members daily and exclusively devote their time within its walls; or which, during the hours of business, attract the great number of anxious agitated faces that crowd around its doors, or stand in groups about its purlieus. Of late years, indeed, a column of the newspapers is usually occupied with an account of the preceding day's business, reports, &c.; but, as it is well known that the public is interested in 800,000,000l. of national debt, this seems all natural enough. Now and then, it is true, the editor growls out something on the subject of Stock Exchange tricks- bulls,' 'bears,' &c. : but even this scarcely awakens the curiosity of the public; they know that they have always received their dividends regularly, with all these mysterious givings-out, and conclude therefore that the allusions are to something of private or confined interest, like a gambling affair in high life, or a disputed pigeon-match at the Jockey Club; even the not unfrequent circumstance of a coroner's inquest on a stockbroker, or of men of supposed wealth flying their country, though they excite a vague notion of some terrible agency being at work, convey no dis

tinct notion of its nature or extent; and these events continue to be as little regarded by the public generally, as the bursts of smoke and the roar of Etna by the peasant who unheedingly dresses his vines on its base. It is our present design, therefore, to let the reader have a peep into the crater of the Stock Exchange, and to explain to him briefly what he will see therein. It may interest-it may do him a more essential service, if it deter him from mingling as an actor in the scenes into which we are about to enter. Ten times our space, however, would not suffice to describe fully this vast arena of avarice and speculation, or to tell in detail the evil which proceeds from it. Until lately, when other nations have paid us the deep but undesigned homage of adopting our customs and institutions, it might have been said that nothing at all approaching to it ever existed in any age or country; and only in England perhaps, where the energies of men are unshackled, and where the pursuit of wealth is the universal allabsorbing passion, could a place originally formed for the sober purposes of business be fostered into a monster of such gigantic dimensions. Will it be conceived, then, that behind the dingy brick buildings which form Bartholomew Lane and Threadneedle Street, approachable only by dark and dirty alleys, there stands the largest gaming-house in Europe-or rather one to which the hells of St. James's Street, or the Frascati's of Paris, are what mere threepenny whist-clubs are to them-Where half a million sterling is sometimes won and lost in a few hours, and which annually precipitates thousands from affluence to beggary-Where magic lamps and wishingcaps are outdone in the rapidity with which needy adventurers become the masters of splendid mansions and equipages; and, a necessary consequence, their former owners exchange them for garrets and poverty. This place also, and not the common risks of trade, swells the Bankrupt-list, and crowds the Insolvent Debtors' Court, though the sufferers, for an obvious reason, withhold the fact, if possible, from their creditors. The most august assemblies, too, are not free from its influence; and many a vote has been given, and many a speech delivered, the motives of which might have been found in the member's jobbing-book. All this however, though an unexaggerated statement of facts, is, perhaps, necessarily vague and incomprehensible to those who are unacquainted with the real nature of the place: we will, therefore, for the benefit of the uninitiated and of the "country gentlemen," first give a little explanatory matter, and then proceed to show a few sketches taken from the life. The Stock Exchange, then, is a large building, the locale of which we have already mentioned, consisting of three spacious halls and other apartments, where some thousand or twelve hundred members meet together for the purpose of gaining money by the rise or fall of the funds. Any attempt to explain the particular mode of their transactions would certainly be ineffectual; for, when their affairs are brought into a court of justice, neither counsel nor judges can ever be made to enter exactly into the detail of them. The nature of it will be conceived with sufficient accuracy by supposing it to consist in betting on the rise or fall of the price of stock, and in hedging or increasing the stake according to circumstances: there are always there