The other striking thing about the list is the entire absence of Gaelic MSS. in the northern countries of Europe, such as Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, where we should most expect to find them. There is one indeed at Stockholm, but it is merely a copy written in the sixteenth century. Surely this goes far to confirm the sinister reputation of the marauding Danes and Norsemen with regard to learning. Keating, writing 250 years ago, asserts their destructiveness. “It was not allowed to give instruction in letters.... No scholars, no clerics, no books, no holy relics, were left in church or monastery through dread of them. Neither bard nor philosopher nor musician pursued his wonted profession in the land.” Apparently these northern pillagers, who laid waste so many monasteries, instead of removing the rare and precious books to their own lands, were no better than the Vandals in their mad business of burning and destroying on the spot what they evidently themselves could not value or appreciate. But coming now to the British Isles, we might briefly consider the literary legacy which the learned Frenchman found in those libraries of England and Ireland that he visited. In all, he mentions 953 as the number of MSS. to which he had access, and these were located as follows:— At Cambridge 3 „ British Museum 166 „ Oxford 15 „ Royal Irish Academy 560 „ Trinity College, Dublin 63 „ Franciscans, Dublin 22 „ Lord Ashburnham 63 „ Some special libraries 61 ——— Total 953 === So far from being exhaustive, our literary commissioner thinks these figures very far below the actual number of Gaelic MSS. in the British Isles. Though he makes no reference in this respect to Wales or Scotland, he is aware that there must be many in private libraries that he has not indicated. And he admits that, according to O’Curry, Trinity College has 140 instead of the 63 he mentions. And besides its 559 catalogued MSS., the Royal Academy of Ireland possesses about as many more not catalogued, of which only one, the Book of Fermoy, was described to him as worthy of his special attention.