or opposition from the inhabitants.  The Picts took the advice, but soon found themselves in want of helpmates.  They applied again to their neighbours, and were obligingly supplied with wives on the condition “that, when any difficulty should arise, they should choose a king from the female royal race rather than from the male.”  The Picts accepted the terms and the ladies; “and the custom,” says Bede, “as is well known, is observed among the Picts to this day.”

Bede then continues to give a description of Ireland.  His account, although of some length, and not in all points reliable, is too interesting to be omitted, being the opinion of an Englishman, and an author of reputation, as to the state of Ireland, socially and physically, in the seventh century:  “Ireland, in breadth and for wholesomeness and serenity of climate, far surpasses Britain; for the snow scarcely ever lies there above three days; no man makes hay in summer for winter’s provision, or builds stables for his beasts of burden.  No reptiles are found there; for, though often carried thither out of Britain, as soon as the ship comes near the shore, and the scent of the air reaches them, they die.  On the contrary, almost all things in the island are good against poison.  In short, we have known that when some persons have been bitten by serpents, the scrapings of leaves of books that were brought out of Ireland, being put into water and given them to drink, have immediately expelled the spreading poison, and assuaged the swelling.  The island abounds in milk and honey;[65] nor is there any want of vines, fish,[66] and fowl; and it is remarkable for deer and goats.”

The chronology of Irish pagan history is unquestionably one of its greatest difficulties.  But the chronology of all ancient peoples is equally unmanageable.  When Bunsen has settled Egyptian chronology to the satisfaction of other literati as well as to his own, and when Hindoo and Chinese accounts of their postdiluvian or antediluvian ancestors have been reconciled and synchronized, we may hear some objections to “Irish pedigrees,” and listen to a new “Irish question.”

Pre-Christian Irish chronology has been arranged, like most ancient national chronologies, on the basis of the length of reign of certain kings.  As we do not trace our descent from the “sun and moon” we are not necessitated to give our kings “a gross of centuries apiece,” or to divide the assumed period of a reign between half-a-dozen monarchs;[67] and the difficulties are merely such as might be expected before chronology had become a science.  The Four Masters have adopted the chronology of the Septuagint; but O’Flaherty took the system of Scaliger, and thus reduced the dates by many hundred years.  The objection of hostile critics has been to the history rather than to the chronology of the history; but these objections are a mere petitio principii.  They cannot understand how Ireland could have had a succession of kings and comparative civilization,—­in