that fools are most thoughtless, and wise men most thoughtful.

The question really is whether the revenues of the Protestant Established Church in Ireland shall now be appropriated in such a manner as most effectually to promote the welfare of the people of Ireland, or whether the change shall be put off until some period of convulsion, of excitement and of danger, when the wishes of the people wrought up to angry determination, must, as a matter of necessity, be satisfied by a less conditional surrender, or perhaps even not be satisfied without an unconditional surrender. The question is now in the phase in which English Churchrates were some few years ago; a favourable arrangement of them might have been effected then. What kind of arrangement is or ever will be possible now? This is but a weak illustration-the argument for English Churchrates being stronger than for the Established Church in Ireland, and the former being but a trifle compared with the latter. A great grievance and a great injustice like the Protestant Established Church in Ireland, cannot, in a country of free discussion, last for ever, or last very long. And it is not in human nature that six millions of people, who feel themselves as much entitled to justice as any other of Her Majesty's subjects, should very long submit to such an injustice.

ART. III.-Annals of Ireland. Three Fragments, copied from ancient sources by Dubhaltach Mac Firbisigh; and edited with a translation and notes from a manuscript preserved in the Burgundian Library at Brussels, by John O'Donovan, LL.D., M.R.I.A. Dublin: Printed for the Irish Archæological and Celtic Society, 1860.

JOHN O'Donovan, born at Atateemore, in the County Kilkenny, on the 9th of July 1809, was one of the nine children of Edmund O'Donovan, a farmer in moderate circumstances, whose ancestor was traditionally said to have removed from the County of Cork to Kilkenny, early in the seventeenth century. The death of Edmund O'Donovan in 1817 caused the dispersion of his family; and John O'Donovan was brought to Dublin by his elder brother Michael, who, although in an humble position, contrived to procure for him the rudiments of a sound

education. His taste for historical pursuits was ascribed by him to the impressions made on his youthful mind by the narrations of his paternal uncle Patrick O'Donovan, who was regarded as the great depository of the legendary lore of Kilkenny and the adjacent counties. In 1826, John O'Donovan commenced to apply himself to the study of archæology and philosophical grammar, to which his atten tion was directed by James Scurry, (O'Scoraidhe) who had come from Waterford to seek literary employment in Dublin. Through Scurry, O'Donovan became acquainted with James Hardiman, then a sub-commissioner of Irish Records, who, forming a high estimate of his capacity, engaged him to transcribe legal and historical documents. This employment, together with the assistance received from his brother Michael, enabled O'Donovan to subsist till he obtained a situation on the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, which had been commenced in 1825. The general direction of the arrangements of the Surveys of England and Ireland had been committed to Colonel Thomas Colby, of the Royal Engineers, who finding it inconvenient to devote his time to the local charge of the Irish Survey office, in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, entrusted that duty to Lieutenant Thomas A. Larcom, whom he brought with him from the English Survey.

The Maps executed under the Survey being required to be made on a scale sufficiently large to exhibit the boundaries of townlands, the Engineers soon found that the English modes of spelling the local names were embarras singly vague and unsettled; it was consequently considered desirable to endeavour to identify the several places with the appellations by which they had been originally called, and thus establish, for future reference, a standard orthography on the Maps about to be published. For this purpose Edward O'Reilly, compiler of the Irish Dictionary, was employed by the Government at a miserably low rate of remuneration, at the Survey

Upwards of a hundred and fifty years before the commencement of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, this matter had engaged the attention of the acute Sir William Petty who made the following observations, in 1672: "But now all the lands are geometrically divided, and that without abolishing the ancient denominations and divisions. So that it is yet wanting to prevent the various spelling of names not understood, that some both com

Office, Phoenix Park. As the townland and other divisions under various denominations had existed over the whole of Ireland from very early times, it soon became apparent that a sufficient extension of the original orthographic inquiries, so as to trace all the mutations of each name, would be, in fact, to pass in review the local history of the whole country. A historical section of the Survey was consequently formed by Lieutenant Larcom, and placed under the care of George Petrie; in this department O'Donovan obtained an engagement at a very humble salary after Edward O'Reilly's death in the year 1829, having been recommended to Lieutenant Larcom, as a young Irish scholar of great promise.

No accurate knowledge existed, at this period, of the ancient literature and language of Ireland; the latter, in its colloquial and modern form, was preserved mainly among the natives of the humbler ranks, the wealthier classes of the country being, for the most part low English either in race or sentiment. With the distinguished exception of the Rev. Dr. Charles O'Conor, no man of learning and independent position had been found to devote himself systematically to studies so unremunerative and so difficult. Many individual meritorious efforts on a small scale in this direction had to be abandoned from want of adequate support before approaching to maturity, and, having produced no important fruits, they have sunk into comparative oblivion. The labours of the Irish "Record Commission" would have thrown a flood of light upon early Anglo-Irish history, but the Commission was

prehending the names of all public denominations according as they are spelled in the latest grants, should be set out by authority to determine the name for the time to come. And that where the same land hath other names, or hath been spelled with other conscriptions of letters or syllables, that the same be mentioned with an alias. Where the public and new authenticated denomination part of a greater antiquated denomination, that it be so expressed, as by being called the East, West, South, or North part thereof. And if the said denomination comprehend several obsolete or inconsiderable parcels, that the same be expressed likewise. The last clause of the Explanatory Act," added Petty, "enabled men to put new names on their respective lands, instead of those uncouth, uniatelligible ones yet upon them. And it would not be amiss if the significant part of the Irish names were interpreted, where they are not, or cannot be abolished."

suddenly dissolved by Government when it had advanced far enough to be prepared to give to the public the results of much valuable labour. Of the native history documents and monuments of the Irish race a profound ignorance prevailed, coupled with theories and ideas of the most absurd and fantastic character, pompously put forward by pretentious and shallow literary charlatans.

In the historical department of the Ordnance Survey was commenced a careful examination of printed books and manuscripts, with the object of extracting all the local information which they contained. The examination of the ancient manuscripts in the Irish language in the possession of the Irish Academy was undertaken by O'Donovan, the results of whose early labours were systematized by Petrie, in whom the acquirements of an artist were combined with logical and skilful antiquarian discernment in the department of native monuments and inscriptions-a science which may be said to have been uncultivated by Irish scholars before his time.

At the commencement of these researches O'Donovan was acquainted only with the modern Irish tongue, but, in the course of his labours, he by intense application gradually acquired a knowledge of the language in its ancient and obsolete forms. His first printed Essays appeared in 1832 in the "Dublin Penny Journal." That periodical was projected by a Scotch working printer named Francis Ross, then in the employment of Mr. John S. Folds, of Great Strand Street, Dublin, and to its early numbers the Rev. Cæsar Otway was the chief contributor. Its success was so great at the commencement that of some numbers upwards of seventy thousand copies were sold, and the publisher was obliged for a time to keep several of the hand printing presses then in use, constantly working to supply the demand. Francis Ross possessed an extraordinary faculty for extemporizing articles, which he composed as he proceeded with the arrangement of the type, without the assistance of any copy, and in this mode he frequently contributed to the "Christian Examiner," on which he worked as a compositor in Mr. Folds' office.

To the "Dublin Penny Journal" in 1832, O'Donovan made the following contributions: Translation of Prince Aldfrid's Irish Poem; Translation of the Irish Charter of Newry; On the Antiquity of Corn in Ireland; The Battle of Clontarf; Irish Proverbs translated; Annals of Dublin

from the Four Masters; The Instructions of Cormac Mac Art; On the Antiquity of Mills in Ireland. These articles, written with an avowed desire of attaining to the truth in the subjects treated on, were replete with extracts from old documents in the Irish language which gave them an incontestible authority, and demonstrated that copious written materials existed for illustrating the history and antiquities of the country.

O'Donovan established his character as an historic topographer by the Essay which he contributed to the Dublin Penny Journal, in May 1833, on Dunseverick Castle, the ruins of which stand on an insulated rock near the centre of a small bay, three miles east of the Giant's Causeway. Various Irish writers of high repute had set down Dunsobarky as the ancient name of Carrickfergus ; while others assumed it to be the old appellation of Downpatrick; and as a specimen of the state of Irish learning in the year 1823 we may here quote the following etymology of the name given by Mac Skimin in the second edition of his History of Carrickfergus:

"Until about the beginning of the second century we have no document that notices Carrickfergus, when we find it first distinguished by the name of Dunsobarky.The above name appears to be a compound of two words purely Celtic; the dun, din, dune, or don, primarily signifying a mount, hill, high ground, or insulated rock, and sobhar, or sobarky strong, powerful, or the like."

In direct opposition to such pretentious writers, O'Donovan demonstrated from documents of unimpeachable authenticity, that Dunsobarky was neither Carrickfergus nor Downpatrick, but the insulated Dunseverick, the erection of which is especially recorded by the old native chroniclers, who state that it was called Dun Sobhairce, or the Fort of Sobharce, from having been built by a Chief of the latter name; and under this appellation it is noticed in the oldest Irish manuscript now extant in Ireland. O'Donovan concluded this remarkable Essay on Dunseverick Castle with the following observations:

"I should not have troubled the reader with so many quotations and minute references, had I not felt myself called upon to correct this gross mistake in the geography of ancient Ireland-a mistake which it has been the custom of every writer who has treated of the subject to copy from his predecessors, without examining the grounds on which the statement rested. I am also fully convinced,