more than that in the British Museum.[4] Possibly, this is but a small fraction of the entire output of the Irish artists of pagan times; for many Irish gold ornaments have been discovered in Scandinavia and in Western Europe not to speak of many finds which never enter a museum.[5] From such material remains it would appear to be a legitimate deduction that even at this early age the Irish were skilled craftsmen and acquired by some means at least an elementary and industrial and technical education and that they were already cultivating the æsthetic. Art was developing on distinctly national lines, yet the country was not isolated. There must have been direct communication with the Continent; for Mr. Coffey has traced Aegean and Scandinavian influence in the incised ornament of the New Grange group[6] and Iberian influence on some of the later type of bronze ornaments.[7] THE BREHON LAWS: The laws of a country dealing as they do with man in his relations to his fellow-man and society in general are always an important indication of the state of civilization attained by the race which has evolved them. In this connection a valuable source of information on the social condition and state of culture attained by the pagan Irish is the native code of laws, generally styled the Brehon Laws, but more correctly termed the _Féineachas_. According to a generally accepted tradition these laws were revised and codified in 438 A.D. by a committee of nine appointed by King Laoghaire at the suggestion of St. Patrick. The committee consisted of three kings (Laoghaire, High King of Ireland; Corc, King of Munster; and Daire, King of Cairnach); three saints (St. Patrick, himself, St. Benin and St. Cairnech); and three learned men (Ross, Dubhthach and Feargus).[8] These laws grew up with the people from the very beginning of society and took cognisance of them from every point of view. They professed to regulate domestic and social relations of every kind, as well as professions, trades, industries, occupations and wages.[9] As laws they are too minute; but this defect renders them valuable to the student who is interested in the social conditions of the period during which they were evolved. As a recent commentator[10] has remarked: “The rigorously authentic character of these laws relating to, and dealing with the actual realities of life and with institutions and a state of society nowhere else revealed to the same extent; the extreme antiquity both of the provisions and the language in which they were written, and the meagreness of Continental material illustrative of the same things endow them with exceptional archaic, archæological and philological interest.” The development of such a comprehensive and detailed code of laws must have been the work of many generations of lawmakers and suggest a relatively high degree of native culture. In this connection one is inclined to quote the emphatic declaration of Dr. George