Owing to persistent agitation, and some fierce uprisings, which caused the imperial government to listen to the voice of reason, the social and political conditions of the Irish people have been somewhat improved of late years. The Irish Church was disestablished by the Gladstone Ministry, in 1869, and, under the leadership of Isaac Butt, Parnell, Davitt, and other Irish patriots, Protestant as well as Catholic, the harsh land laws have been greatly modified, and the Irish people have a better “hold on their soil,” and are much less subject to the capricious will of their landlords than formerly. They are, also, much better lodged and fed than in the last generation, and education, of a practical kind, has become almost universal. The national school system has many features in common with our own, and is improving year by year. In the higher branches of education, Ireland is well supplied. Trinity College, Dublin, the Alma Mater of many celebrated men, has existed since the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but, until the end of the eighteenth century, was not open to Catholics. Maynooth College, in Kildare, is the great Catholic ecclesiastical seminary of Ireland, and there is also a Catholic university in Dublin. Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford, and other cities have Catholic colleges, and there are Protestant seats of learning in Ulster and other provinces. Cork, Belfast, and Galway have each branch universities, called “Queen’s Colleges,” which are conducted on a non-sectarian basis. These are only a few of Ireland’s educational institutions, but they serve to illustrate the agreeable fact that a dearth of opportunity for acquiring learning is no longer a reproach to the Irish people, or, rather, to their English law-makers. The taxes which support the institutions maintained by Government are paid by Ireland into the Imperial Treasury, so that Great Britain is not burdened by them, as many suppose. Recently, a commission appointed by the British Parliament to inquire into the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland reported back that the latter country was overtaxed annually to the amount of $15,000,000. This grievance, although complained of by all classes, has not yet been redressed. Dublin, Belfast, and other leading Irish cities possess very choice and extensive libraries. That of Trinity College, in the first-mentioned city, is considered one of the best in Europe, and it is particularly rich in ancient Irish manuscripts, some of which have been translated from the original Gaelic into English by the late Dr. John O’Donovan, Professor Eugene O’Curry, and other Irish savants. There are many large circulating libraries in all the principal municipalities, and most of the smaller towns. These are patronized, in the main, by poor people of literary taste, who can not afford satisfactory libraries of their own. There is now a revival of Irish literature in Great Britain as well as in Ireland itself.