their original fulness and vigour, hardly a hue has faded, hardly a
minute circumstance or articulation been suffered to decay.

The enthusiasm with which the Irish intellect seized upon the grand
moral life of Christianity, and ideals so different from, and so
hostile to, those of the heroic age, did not consume the traditions
or destroy the pious and reverent spirit in which men still looked
back upon those monuments of their own pagan teachers and kings,
and the deep spirit of patriotism and affection with which the
mind still clung to the old heroic age, whose types were warlike
prowess, physical beauty, generosity, hospitality, love of family
and nation, and all those noble attributes which constituted the
heroic character as distinguished from the saintly. The Danish
conquest, with its profound modification of Irish society, and
consequent disruption of old habits and conditions of life, did not
dissipate it; nor the more dangerous conquest of the Normans, with
their own innate nobility of character, chivalrous daring, and
continental grace and civilisation; nor the Elizabethan convulsions
and systematic repression and destruction of all native phases of
thought and feeling. Through all these storms, which successively
assailed the heroic literature of ancient Ireland, it still held
itself undestroyed. There were still found generous minds to
shelter and shield the old tales and ballads, to feel the nobleness
of that life of which they were the outcome, and to resolve that
the soil of Ireland should not, so far as they had the power to
prevent it, be denuded of its raiment of history and historic
romance, or reduced again to primeval nakedness. The fruit of this
persistency and unquenched love of country and its ancient
traditions, is left to be enjoyed by us. There is not through the
length and breadth of the country a conspicuous rath or barrow of