This "revival" did not reach Ireland. Many will, doubtless,
attribute this fact to the almost total exclusion then supposed
to exist of Ireland from all European intercourse. It would be
a great error to imagine such to have been the cause. Indeed, at
that very time, Ireland was more in daily contact with Italy,
France, and Spain, than had been the case since the eighth century.

If the Irish were right in holding steadfast to the line of their
traditional studies, in rejecting the city life and commercial
spirit of the Danes, in opposing Anglo-Norman feudalism, and,
finally, in not accepting the more than doubtful advantages flowing
from the literary revival of the fifteenth century; if, in all
this, they did not oppose true progress, but merely wished to
advance in the peculiar path opened up to them by the Christianity
which they had received more fully, with more earnestness, and
with a view to a greater development of the supernatural idea,
than any other European nation--then, beyond all other modes, did
they display their strength of will and their undying national
vitality in their resistance to Protestantism--a resistance which
has been called opposition to progress, but the success of which
to-day proves beyond question that they were right.

It was, the reader may remark, a resistance to the whole of
Northern Europe, wherein their island was included. For, the
whole of Northern Europe rebelled against the Church at the
beginning of the sixteenth century, to enter upon a new road of
progress and civilization, as it has been called, ending finally
in the frightful abyss of materialism and atheism which now gapes
under the feet of modern nations--an abyss in whose yawning womb
nullus ordo, sed sempiternus horror habitat. The end of that