Glendaloch has been ruined and uprooted in a shocking manner. Of all its edifices there are only two that still stand--namely, the round tower and the building known as "Kevin's Kitchen." This latter is stone-roofed, and is considered to be one of the oldest buildings of the kind in Ireland. Archæologists are not agreed as to what particular use it was originally intended, but that it was an ecclesiastical edifice of some kind seems to be the opinion of everyone. There are, it is said, the remains of seven churches still to be seen in Glendaloch. It appears to have been a walled city, and Petrie, one of the most painstaking and learned archæologists that ever Ireland produced, claimed to have traced the tracks of the walls in many places. That it contained a large population in the eighth and ninth centuries seems to admit of little doubt. Oengus the Culdee, whose verse in which Glendaloch is mentioned has been given in the article on "Emania the Golden," calls it "multitudinous Glendaloch," and "the Rome of the western world." Allowing for the exaggeration of which ancient Gaelic poets may have been rather too fond, it must be admitted that what they say cannot be entirely ignored; and it is more than probable that immediately before the Danes and other northern nations began their raids on Ireland, Glendaloch may have been, and probably was, a large monastic city, as cities were in those days. The Irish monasteries of the eighth and ninth centuries were probably the wealthiest in the world, if not in lands, at least in gold and silver. Where or how they got, or where or how the ancient Irish got, such quantities of the precious metals is a mystery that may never be solved; but that Ireland had an enormous amount of gold and silver in ancient times there can be no doubt at all. This would be sufficiently proved by the quantity, not of coined money, for they had not any, but of ornaments of almost every kind that have been found in all parts of the country, more, it is said, than have been found in the rest of Europe. There is hardly a barony in Ireland, it might be said hardly a parish, in which stories are not told of people having become suddenly rich by finding, it is naturally supposed, treasure trove in the shape of gold ornaments, very few of which have been preserved, for they were generally melted down. Sir Wm. Wilde mentions, in one of his catalogues of articles in the Royal Irish Academy, a find of £3000 worth of gold ornaments in the County Clare some fifty years ago. It seems a well-ascertained fact that two labourers found over £20,000 worth of gold ornaments when working on a railway in Munster some forty odd years ago. The founder of one of the largest jewellery houses in Ireland told a friend of the writer's that his first "rise" in business was brought about by buying antique gold ornaments, at sometimes not half their value, from people who brought them to him from the country.