approaching a real civil war, the immense lordships of the great Geraldine House were confiscated, and granted to a colony of English blood. Tyrone, the real successor of his kinsman, Shane O'Neill, a soldier and statesman of no ordinary parts, seeing, as he bitterly said, that his 'lands were marked down by the spoiler,' endeavoured, not without partial success, to combine a great Irish League against England; he entered into an alliance with Spain; a Spanish army landed on the southern coast of Munster; after a long and sanguinary contest, Tyrone yielded, but his resistance had been so formidable that he was allowed to retain his possessions. The subjugation of a large part of Ireland, in the Elizabethan wars, was marked by incidents of a most atrocious character. The Government had no regular army to act in the field; it was compelled largely to rely on armed levies of the Englishry, and on bodies of the Irishry attached to the conqueror's standards; for in this, as in nearly all instances throughout their history, the Irish Celts were at feud with each other; Celtic Ireland was a house divided against itself. The queen, it has been written, 'ruled over blood and ashes,' when Mountjoy sheathed his victorious sword; the memory of this period still lives in Irish tradition. A season of exhaustion and repose ensued after James I. had ascended the throne; but the time, in the phrase of Tacitus, had an evil aspect in peace itself. The Pale had long before this been effaced; conquest and confiscation had spread over nearly the whole island; the domination of England was felt almost everywhere. As the result, the whole of Ireland was made shire land; the old Celtic land system, which still widely prevailed, was swept away by decisions of the Anglican Courts of Justice; it was declared to be 'a lewd and not law-worthy thing;' all the Irish land was subjected to English modes of tenure; they were imposed on a people which detested these gifts of the stranger; innumerable tribal rights were destroyed. Ere long the work of confiscation began again; the domains of Tyrone and of his kinsman O'Donnell were pronounced forfeited for reasons that have never been ascertained; the Crown was placed in possession of nearly six counties of Ulster. Up to this time the settlements of English colonists, which had been made in Ireland by Tudor conquest, had failed; the colonists had been almost lost in the midst of the Irishry, who hemmed them around. This immense confiscation was, however, in part successful; it was carried out on comparatively enlightened principles; it has produced the famous Plantation of Ulster; and this, with other settlements in the counties of Antrim and Down, has established, in a large part of the northern province of Ireland, a hardy and thriving community, in the main, of Scottish blood. Confiscation, nevertheless, did not stop here; 'the ravages of war,' in Burke's language, were 'carried on amidst seeming peace;' enormous tracts were