When we call to mind her position in the heart of a country misunderstood and misgoverned for centuries, we cannot but marvel that she has so serenely kept the _via media_ between political, philosophical, and social extremes. At once less conservative and less radical than her sisters, a dry intellectual light has been her guide. It may be that the native humour of the soil has preserved her from the follies of dogmatism--ecclesiastical, scientific, political, or literary,--and equally so from frenzied devotion to hopeless causes or extravagant theories. Stranger to sentiment, and no “Queen of Romance,” I cannot think that an enemy could deny beauty to the solemn stateliness of her quadrangles. In the quiet of moonlit nights, or when the summer sun shines upon the grey walls and the green of grass and foliage in her courts and park, there are few so unimpressionable as to remain insensible to her dignity and loveliness. But her truest dignity is in the intellectual honour of her sons. [Illustration: JACOBUS USSERIUS, ARCHIEPISCOPUS ARMACHANUS, TOTIUS HIBERNIÆ PRIMAS] Among the very first batch of graduates in these the infant days of the College a great personality appears. At the first Public Commencements held in 1601, on Shrove Tuesday, in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, “Sir Ussher,” one of the students entered at the first matriculation examination, was admitted to his Master’s degree. James Ussher was of a family that had been resident in Ireland since the time of King John, and on both sides of the house his ancestors had held important public offices. His grandfather had been Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, and his uncle, afterwards Primate of Ireland, while Archdeacon in Dublin had had much to do with the foundation of the Irish University. “Sir Ussher” became Fellow and Proctor in due time, and while still under age was by a faculty ordained Priest and Deacon. His first recorded visit to England was that upon the errand in which he met with Sir Thomas Bodley buying books for the Oxford Library which now bears his name. Two of the greatest Libraries of the United Kingdom were thus associated in their foundation. The energy and extraordinary abilities of Ussher were soon very widely recognised, and he was offered the Provostship in 1609, which position, however, he declined. On the occasion of his next visit to England, he bore a letter of recommendation to King James from the Lord Deputy and Council, it being supposed that the King was prejudiced against him. The gifts and learning which had made him so conspicuous a figure in Ireland did not fail to impress the King, who appointed him Bishop of Meath, “a Bishop of his own making,” as he said. He preached, while in London, before the Commons and at St. Margaret’s. During his tenure of the Bishopric he was very prominent in public affairs, and in 1625 he was raised to the Primacy. While occupied with the high civil and episcopal duties of