It is strange how it was that the ancient or rather the mediæval Irish, who knew how to erect such beautiful and enduring stone and mortar structures as the round towers, and such gems of architectural beauty as Cormac's Chapel is, and as Mellifont Abbey certainly was, should have housed their kings and chiefs in dwellings of wood, whose only defence was an earthen rampart surmounted by a palisade of stakes, or in a Cyclopean fortress of dry stones. It is absolutely certain that not a single castle built of stones and mortar existed in Ireland prior to the Anglo-French invasion. The Irish knew how to build round towers and churches, but seem never to have thought of building castles until their invaders taught them to build them. The thing looks very curious, but, on closer examination, it does not appear so strange, for it is now pretty well known that none of the Northern nations had castles before the eleventh century. The French seem to have been the first of the Northern nations that had castles. It is very doubtful if there was a castle in Great Britain before the Norman-French conquest. If there were castles in England or Scotland before the battle of Hastings, they were imitations of those on the Continent, and were probably designed and built by Continental architects and mechanics. Neither the Scandinavians nor Northern-Germans appear to have had castles until late in the middle ages, when they copied them from more Southern nations. But it was the Norman-French that brought the art of castle building to its greatest perfection. The ruins of Hoar Abbey, or St Mary's Abbey, as it is sometimes called, are situated close to the Rock, but not on it. It is believed to have been founded by the Benedictine order in the thirteenth century. Cashel is interesting in almost every way. There is a magnificent view from its ruin-crowned rock over some of the fairest and most fertile land in Ireland. Nor is a mountain view wanting, for the Galtees, the second highest range of mountains in Ireland, are visible, and a noble range they are, not rounded lumps like so many of the Wicklow Hills, but steep, sheer, cloud-piercing heights,--Alps in miniature. It is a pity that the town, or rather the city, of Cashel is not larger and more thriving. It may have been, like Glendaloch and Kildare, much larger in early Christian times than it is at present, but there does not seem to be any statement of the fact in any of the old Gaelic books, so far as is known to the writer. But whatever may have been the past history of the city of Cashel, no one in search of the picturesque, the unique, or the historic in Ireland should fail to see its Rock. It is said that when Scott visited Ireland he was more impressed by the Rock of Cashel than by anything else of its kind that he saw in the country.