history; and whatever may be said, it has been essentially an ally of the State, by reason of its great religious authority. And if properly understood, it is a mighty conservative power, which ought if possible to be won over to the side of order and law; this is an ample, if there were no other, reason that statesmen should comply with its most reasonable demand, and remove the grievance, in high Catholic education, that only blind bigotry can deny. The administration of justice in Ireland is better, on the whole, than it was in the early Victorian era. It is not only that the law's delay has been to a considerable extent, remedied, as it has been, in England, by an improved procedure. Traces of Protestant ascendency were to be seen on the Irish Bench sixty years ago, though these were evanescent and few; such a trial as that of O'Connell in 1844, marked by partiality and even by wrong, would be simply impossible at the present time. Trial by jury, however, in Ireland too often reflects the animosities and prejudices of class, and is liable to grave perversion and errors; it is sometimes necessary, in causes where religious or political feeling is engaged, to make a careful selection in forming juries, in order that common right should be done; this inevitable, but invidious, process, held up to execration by the name of 'packing,' is certainly a matter that causes regret. The fairness seen in the administration of the law in Ireland has been strikingly illustrated of late years; leaders and agents of the Land and the National Leagues have had to answer for their offences in the inferior courts; but despite rabid clamour against what is called 'coercion,' the conduct of these inquiries has not been really impugned. A laudable attempt, however, to make the magisterial bench more popular, has lately placed on it an order of men, of whom some have abused their power; these instances, nevertheless, have not been frequent; the experiment cannot be pronounced a failure. The intellect of Ireland is not so fruitful as it was in the generation before the union; she has no political thinkers to be named with Burke, no writer of fiction equal to Maria Edgeworth, no dramatist to be compared to Sheridan, no orators who have reached the heights of eloquence reached by Grattan, Curran, Plunket, and other glories of her defunct Parliament. But there has been progress in this respect within the last sixty years; Ireland cannot boast of such public men as O'Connell, Sheil, and even Spring Rice; but she possesses Dufferin in the diplomatic sphere, and Lecky, and one or two others of repute in that of letters; she has only recently lost Lord Cairns and Lord Russell. The improvement of primary education in Ireland has been immense; the land is full of elementary schools, which, in the last generation, were, comparatively, very few, and though a considerable part of the population is still illiterate, the greater part, whose fathers