were right in rejecting. But, as there are still many men who,
without ever having studied the question, do not hesitate, even
in our days, to throw barbarism in their teeth, and attribute to
it the pitiable condition which the Irish to-day present to the
world, we add a few further considerations on this point.

First, then, we say, barbarians have no history; and the Irish
certainly had a history long before St. Patrick converted them.
Until lately, it is true, the common opinion of writers on Ireland
was adverse to this assertion of ours; but, after the labors of
modern antiquarians--of such men as O'Donovan, Todd, E. O'Curry,
and others--there can no longer be any doubt on the subject. If
Julius Caesar was right in stating that the Druids of Gaul
confined themselves to oral teaching--and the statement may very
well be questioned, with the light of present information on the
subject--it is now proved that the Ollamhs of Erin kept written
annals which went back to a very remote age of the world. The
numerous histories and chronicles written by monks of the sixth
and following centuries, the authenticity of which cannot be denied,
evidently presuppose anterior compositions dating much farther back
than the introduction of our holy religion into Ireland, which the
Christian annalists had in their hands when they wrote their books,
sometimes in Latin, sometimes in old Irish, sometimes in a strange
medley of both languages. It is now known that St. Patrick brought
to Ireland the Roman alphabet only, and that it was thenceforth
used not merely for the ritual of the Church, and the dissemination
of the Bible and of the works of the Holy Fathers, but likewise
for the transcription, in these newly-consecrated symbols of thought,
of the old manuscripts of the island; which soon disappeared, in
the far greater number of instances at least, owing to the favor