Its history is of the meagerest. It was found in the month of August, 1850, on the strand at Drogheda, washed up from the deep by some especially generous tide, and left there for two little boys to pick up. The mother of the children carried their find to a dealer in old iron, but he refused to buy so small and insignificant an object. She then tried a watchmaker, who gave her eighteen pence (thirty six cents) for the brooch. The watchmaker cleaned it up and then beheld what he conceived to be a jewel of silver covered with gold filagree. He thereupon proceeded to Dublin and sold it to Messrs. Waterhouse, the jewelers, for twelve pounds (sixty dollars), which it must be admitted was a very fair profit upon his original outlay. Messrs. Waterhouse exhibited far and wide this jewel which was by them called the Royal Tara Brooch--a name which serves well enough to distinguish it from other brooches, but which cannot be said to have any historical appropriateness. Whatever truth there may be in the legendary magnificence of "Tara's Halls," there is no reason to suppose that this brooch was ever displayed within its walls. These walls, whatever their nature, were represented by green mounds and grassy rath-circles, such as may be seen to-day, when the so-called Tara Brooch left the hands of the craftsman who made it. After a time the Tara Brooch was sold to the Royal Irish Academy for two hundred pounds (one thousand dollars) which, though by no means an exorbitant price, was again a very fair profit for Messrs. Waterhouse. [Illustration: THE TARA BROOCH.] The form and workmanship of the Brooch are of an early Celtic type, and it is believed by competent authorities to be extremely ancient, dating probably from before the eighth century. At any rate, it may with confidence be placed before the eleventh century, for a certain design known as the divergent-spiral or trumpet-pattern, which though common before disappeared from Irish art about that period, is to be seen among its intricate ornamentation. The groundwork of the jewel is not silver, as was at first supposed, but white metal, a compound of tin and copper. It is however the beautiful gold tracery laid upon this white metal which renders it so famous. No description can give an idea of what it is. The Tara Brooch must be seen to be understood.