the truth during their lifetime. And this exercised a most salutary
effect on the people; for perhaps never in any other country did
the admiration for learning, elevation of feeling, and ardent love
of justice and right, prevail as in Ireland, at least while enjoying
its native institutions and government.

From many of the previous details, the reader will easily see
That the literature of the Celts presented features peculiar to
Their race, and which supposed a mental constitution seldom found
among others. If, in general, the world of letters gives expression
In some degree to social wants and habits, among the Celts this
expression was complete, and argued a peculiar bent of mind given
entirely to traditional lore, and never to philosophical speculations
and subtlety. We see in it two elements remarkable for their
distinctness. First, an extraordinary fondness for facts and
traditions, growing out of the patriarchal origin of society
among them; and from this fondness their mind received a particular
tendency which was averse to theories and utopias. All things
resolved themselves into facts, and they seldom wandered away into
the fields of conjectural conclusions. Hence their extraordinary
adaptation to the truths of the Christian religion, whose dogmas
are all supernatural facts, at once human and divine. Hence have
they ever been kept free from that strange mental activity of other
European races, which has led them into doubt, unbelief, skepticism,
until, in our days, there seem to be no longer any fixed principles
as a substratum for religious and social doctrines.

Secondly, we see in the Celtic race a rare and unique outburst
of fancy, so well expressed in the "_Senchus Mor_," their great law
compilation, wherein it is related, that when St. Patrick had