The greatest attraction is the ruins of Monasterboice, an extensive monastery, founded by St. Patrick, like every other ecclesiastical institution in this country, and three magnificent crosses which arise among them, about six miles from town. We tried to get a carriage instead of a jaunting car for the drive, because the latter allows you to see only one side of the roadway, but Mrs. Murphy, who has a livery stable and a tongue that is hung in the middle, could furnish us nothing else. It is a delightful drive. On the outward journey we saw what there is to see on one hand, and coming back we saw everything on the other. The ruins of Monasterboice cover a large area, for five hundred monks and several thousand students were there eight or nine hundred years ago. It was one of the largest educational institutions in the world, as well as a religious retreat. It dates back to the fifth century, and was probably founded by St. Patrick,--certainly by one of his disciples,--although there is no tangible evidence to prove that fact. A "round tower" still in good condition, dates from the ninth century. It is one hundred and ten feet high and fifty-one feet in diameter at the base. It was intended for observation, for signaling to the country around, for the storage of valuables and military supplies, and for defensive purposes. Strangely enough, it sits in a hollow, in the lowest part of an amphitheater, surrounded by hills, but the Irish monks as well as the Irish warriors of ancient times always built beside streams of running water and not upon the heights, like the Goths, the Huns, the Teutons, and the Romans. There are similar "round towers" at Cashel, Glendalough, Kildare, Antrim, and other places in the interior of Ireland which have long been subject of an irreconcilable dispute among archæologists. While no one knows definitely who built them, or what they were for, the most credited theory is that I have given above.