For centuries it was said that whoever might be Viceroy of Ireland it was the Earl of Kildare who governed the country. A long line of Kildares succeeded each other, and their living successor, better known as the Duke of Leinster, is now the premier of the Irish nobility, although he is still a boy, just twenty-one. Both the Kildares and the Earls of Desmond were descended from Gerald Fitzgerald, who in the thirteenth century founded that powerful clan known as the Geraldines. In the fifteenth, and at the beginning of the sixteenth, century they exercised absolute control in Ireland, and Garrett, or Gerald Fitzgerald, the eighth Earl of Kildare, known as "The Great Earl," had greater authority than any other Irishman has ever displayed in his native island since the days of Brian Boru. At one time his daughter, wife of the Earl of Clanricarde, appealed to her father from a quarrel with her husband. The old gentleman took her part, ordered out his army, and met his son-in-law in the battle of Knockdoe, where it is said eight thousand men were slain. Near the entrance to St. Patrick's Cathedral is a long, narrow, brass tablet upon which are inscribed the names of the fifty-seven deans who have had ecclesiastical jurisdiction there from 1219 to 1902. The most famous in the list is that of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D., author of "Gulliver's Travels," "The Tale of a Tub," and other equally well-known works. He presided here for more than thirty years, and was undoubtedly the most brilliant as well as the most remarkable clergyman in the history of the diocese of Dublin. He was the greatest of all satirists, one of the most brilliant of all wits, and an all-around genius, but was entirely without moral consciousness, altogether selfish, inordinately vain, and one of the most eccentric characters in the history of literature. He was born in Dublin Nov. 30, 1667; educated at Trinity College, where he distinguished himself only by his eccentricities; was curate of two churches, and dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral for more than thirty years, although neither his manners nor his morals conformed to the standards that are fixed for clergymen in these days. He was more famous for his wit than his wisdom; for his piquancy than for piety. He spent most of his life in Dublin, died there, was buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral by the side of a woman whose life he wrecked, and left his money to found an insane asylum which is still in existence.