Still more different from the English is the inner man; naturally mirthful and expansive, witty, careless, even giddy, quarrelsome from mere love of noise, prompt to enthusiasm or despondency, imbued with the love of literary form and legal subtleties, he is the Frenchman of the West, as the Pole or the Japanese are Frenchmen of the East. And always there has been an affinity of nature, a harmony of thought, between them and us. At once we feel we are cousins. Their ancestors formerly came in thousands to fight under our flag. Our revolutions were always felt in Ireland. So strong, for nations as well as individuals, is that mysterious tie of a common origin, or even the most remote consanguinity. * * * * * Does this mean that the Irishman, thanks to his insular position, has escaped all cross breeding and remained pure Celt? Far from it. No country was oftener or more cruelly invaded than his. The stranger implanted himself in it, begat his children there, introduced in the race elements that are still recognizable; for example, that most peculiar expression of the eyes, the height of the cheek-bones, the outline of the temples and cranium, which are in many cases clearly Scandinavian. In the origin of history the primitive inhabitants of Erin, the Firbolgs (men with the skin of beasts) were vanquished by the Thuathan-de-Danan, “the fairy people,” who came from the East, and who founded the realm of Innisfallen, or Island of Fate. A Spanish invasion (probably Phenician), that of the Milesians, overthrew that establishment ten or twelve centuries before the Christian era, and three hundred years before the foundation of Rome. After that came an uninterrupted list of one hundred and ninety-seven Milesian kings, who reached to the arrival of the Northmen, in the eighth century of the present era. Under their rule Ireland enjoyed a profound peace. It was during this period of more than a thousand years that flourished and developed in the island of Erin an entirely original civilization, characterised by the Brehon Code, by customs of great gentleness, by institutions of admirable prudence, among others that of a national militia, the _Fiana-Erin_, or _Fenians_, who were recruited by voluntary enlistment, defended the country and maintained order therein, while the citizens pursued their various avocations,—agriculture, in which they excelled, fishing and navigation, for which they displayed some ability.