Camden, in his _Queen Elizabeth_, has given to the Irish war at least its due rank in the events of the time; and Fynes Moryson tells us that "the general voyce was of Tyrone amongst the English after the defeat of Blackwater, as of Hannibal among the Romans after the defeat of Cannae." Mr. Hume, though he tells us nothing of O'Neill's splendid victories over the English, yet incidentally mentions that "in the year 1599 the queen spent six hundred thousand pounds in six months in the service of Ireland; and Sir Robert Cecil affirmed that in ten years Ireland cost her three million four hundred thousand pounds," which would be about sixty millions of pounds sterling in money of the present day. So well, however, has the memory of all this been suppressed, that even an educated Englishman at this time, if you mentioned to him the great battle of the Yellow Ford would not at all understand to what event you were alluding; so that one is not at all astonished to find that Mr. Motley, in his voluminous book expressly devoted to the religious wars of Europe in those days, and especially the reign of Elizabeth, not only ignores that transaction altogether, but does not so much as know O'Neill's name. When he does once undertake to name him, he calls him not Hugh O'Neill, but "Shanes MacNeil." (_History of United Netherlands_, vol. iv. p. 94.) {21} The Irish, however, still cherish his name and keep his memory green. The peasantry yet tell that strange legend of a troop of the great chiefs lancers all lying in tranced sleep in a cave under the royal hill of Aileagh, each holding his horse's bridle in his hand, and waiting for the spell to be removed that will set them free to strike a blow for their country; and when a man once penetrated into the cave, and saw the sleepers in their ancient mail, one of them lifted his head and asked. _Is the time come?_ To the educated and reflective Irish, also, that cardinal epoch of Irish history, in which O'Neill was the chief figure, has of late become a subject of more zealous study than it ever was before; and these will heartily thank the accomplished author of the present work for the clear light he has thrown upon one strange and painful episode in his country's annals. -------- The Cross.