the 8th of July the Norwegians celebrated an annual mass in her honour. Even in Iceland there is a fiord, or firth, on the north-west coast, called “Patreksfjorðr,” after St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. As we have before stated, the commencements of a national Irish literature were also developed among the clergy at a very early period; which, together with the numerous ecclesiastical buildings in Ireland, prove that the Irish clergy of those times must have attained no mean degree of civilization, and that with regard to education they must, in certain respects, have been a great deal in advance of the heathen Scandinavians. But not to speak of the Icelandic literature—which developed itself in the remotest North immediately after the heathen times, and contemporaneously with the Norwegian dominion in Ireland, and which both in form and substance was undoubtedly far superior to the Irish—there is reason enough to doubt whether the Irish people of that time, although christianized, were really more educated or more advanced in true civilization than the certainly too much decried heathen Norwegians and their Scandinavian kinsmen. It is true, indeed, that the Norwegian Vikings made their way with fire and sword, that they destroyed a number of churches and convents in Ireland, and that in this manner they often occasioned the most violent intestine commotions, which for a time, at least, could not but tend to hinder the progressive development of Christian civilization. But the Irish chronicles themselves teach us that the Christian Irish acted precisely in the same manner at the same period. In their mutual contentions they often burnt ecclesiastical buildings, plundered the shrines of saints, and maltreated the clergy, besides, as is well known, constantly perpetrating amongst themselves the most horrible butchery. Lastly, in Ireland, as in England, we must certainly distinguish between the Vikings, who came to the country for the sake of war and plunder, and the colonists, whose aim it was to obtain a new home in Ireland. The latter brought with them not only great skill in the forging and management of arms, as well as in building and navigating ships for expeditions, both of war and trade, but likewise had their own runic writing; and by the readiness with which they imbibed the newer Christian civilization, soon acquired the ascendancy in the most important Irish cities, so as to become perceptibly enough, not only the equals, but the superiors of the Irish.