’Thus it came to pass that, through the confiscation of their lands and the proscription of their religion, popery was worked by a most vehement process into the blood and brain of the Irish nation.’

It has been often said that the Irish must be an inferior race, since they allowed themselves to be subjugated by some thousands of English invaders.  But it should be recollected, first, that the conquest, commenced by Henry ii. in the twelfth century, was not completed till the seventeenth century, when the King’s writ ran for the first time through the province of Ulster, the ancient kingdom of the O’Neills; in the second place, the weakness of the Celtic communities was not so much the fault of the men as of their institutions, brought with them from the East and clung to with wonderful tenacity.  So long as they had boundless territory for their flocks and herds, and could always move on ‘to pastures new,’ they increased and multiplied, and allowed the sword and the battle-axe to rest, unless when a newly elected chief found it necessary to give his followers ’a hosting’—­which means an expedition for plunder.  Down to the seventeenth century, after five hundred years’ contact with the Teutonic race, they were essentially the same people as they were when the ancient Greeks and Romans knew them.  They are thus described by Dr. Mommsen in his ’History of Rome:’—­’Such qualities—­those of good soldiers and of bad citizens—­explain the historical fact that the Celts have shaken all States and have founded none.  Everywhere we find them ready to rove, or, in other words, to march, preferring movable property to landed estate, and gold to everything else; following the profession of arms as a system of organised pillage, or even as a trade for hire, and with such success that even the Roman historian, Sallust, acknowledges that the Celts bore off the prize from the Romans in feats of arms.  They were the true ‘soldiers of fortune’ of antiquity, as pictures and descriptions represent them, with big but sinewy bodies, with shaggy hair and long moustaches—­quite a contrast to the Greeks and Romans, who shaved the upper lip—­in the variegated embroidered dresses which in combat were not unfrequently thrown off, with a broad gold ring round their neck, wearing no helmets and without missile weapons of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense shield, a long ill-tempered sword, a dagger and a lance, all ornamented with gold, for they were not unskilful in working in metals.  Everything was made subservient to ostentation—­even wounds, which were often enlarged for the purpose of boasting a broader scar.  Usually they fought on foot, but certain tribes on horseback, in which case every free man was followed by two attendants, likewise mounted.  War-chariots were early in use, as they were among the Libyans and Hellenes in the earliest times.  Many a trait reminds us of the chivalry of the middle ages, particularly the custom of single combat, which was foreign to the