have dipped their pens still deeper into the gall of controversy and prejudice.  Usher was one of the Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores, for his family came to Ireland with King John; but he admired and wrote Celtic history with the enthusiasm of a Celt, and he gathered materials for other men’s work with patient industry, however he may have allowed party spirit to influence and warp his own judgment in their use.  Usher was Ware’s most ardent patron.  Habits of indefatigable research did for him, in some degree, what natural genius has done for others.  Nor was he slow to recognize or avail himself of native talent; and there can be no doubt, if he had lived a few years longer after his acquaintance with MacFirbis, that Irish literature would have benefited considerably by the united efforts of the man of power, who was devoted to learning, and the man of gifts, who had the abilities which neither position nor wealth can purchase.  John Lynch, the Bishop of Killala, and the indefatigable and successful impugner of Cambrensis, was another literary luminary of the age.  His career is a fair sample of the extraordinary difficulties experienced by the Irish in their attempts to cultivate intellectual pursuits, and of their undaunted courage in attaining their end.  Usher has himself recorded his visit to Galway, where found Lynch, then a mere youth, teaching a school of humanity (A.D. 1622).  “We had proofe,” he says, “during our continuance in that citie, how his schollars profitted under him, by the verses and orations which they brought us."[518] Usher then relates how he seriously advised the young schoolmaster to conform to the popular religion; but, as Lynch declined to comply with his wishes, he was bound over, under sureties of L400 sterling, to “forbear teaching.”  The tree of knowledge was, in truth, forbidden fruit, and guarded sedulously by the fiery sword of the law.  I cannot do more than name a few of the other distinguished men of this century.  There was Florence Conry, Archbishop of Tuam, and founder of the Irish College of Louvain.  He was one of the first to suggest and to carry out the idea of supplying Irish youth with the means of education on the Continent, which they were denied at home.  It is a fact, unexampled in the history of nations, that a whole race should have been thus denied the means of acquiring even the elements of learning, and equally unexampled is the zeal with which the nation sought to procure abroad the advantages from which they were so cruelly debarred at home.  At Louvain some of the most distinguished Irish scholars were educated.  An Irish press was established within its halls, which was kept constantly employed, and whence proceeded some of the most valuable works of the age, as well as a scarcely less important literature for the people, in the form of short treatises on religion or history.  Colleges were also established at Douay, Lisle, Antwerp, Tournay, and St. Omers, principally through the exertions of Christopher Cusack, a learned