The first of the new scholars to arrive were O’Donovan and O’Curry. Eugene O’Curry, Professor of the Catholic University of Ireland, went straight to the necessities of the case by publishing in 1849 a catalogue of the Gaelic MSS. in the British Museum, and then, of those in the Royal Academy of his native land. Afterwards, besides other valuable contributions, he gave to the world his _Lectures on the MS. Materials of Irish History_, enhancing the interest of the work by putting a very large and varied selection of facsimiles of the ancient writings in the appendix. A very Tischendorf was this indefatigable MS. hunter and interpreter. Very aptly indeed did he speak of himself as an underground worker. Much had been done by other labourers, but the foundation was still to seek and still to lay. And it is significant of former methods, that he knew not one man previous to his own time who had qualified himself for the work in hand, either by mastering the ancient Gaelic, or by making himself acquainted with the MSS. And yet these are the genuine sources of historical and antiquarian knowledge in this department. Close after O’Curry came the great Continental savant Zeuss, who may be regarded as the real founder of the new and solid basis on which Celtic studies now rest. His monumental work, the erudite _Grammatica Celtica_, appeared in Leipzig in 1853, giving a new impetus all over Europe to a study which hitherto had attracted but a languid, or at the best, a restricted attention. And when, following up this great work, the German grammarian published the glosses found in some of the oldest Gaelic MSS. on the Continent, it was recognised that he had opened up a new and most fertile field for future explorers. These latter were immediately forthcoming—learned authorities, like Nigra, Ascoli, Ebel, Stokes, Windisch, and Zimmer, who brought to light other important documents and explained their significance. Thus was the new movement in Celtic study duly inaugurated, with what results we shall see. The glosses published by Zeuss, though they furnish no fresh ideas, offer to the learned world a grammatical interest of the highest kind. They belong, some to the eighth century, others to the ninth, and the venerable Gaelic in which they are couched presents certain antique and curious characteristics which are entirely lacking to the Welsh of the same period, and still more to that of the twelfth and following centuries—the only forms known to the scholars before Zeuss.