As bearing on the Irish character of the present day, it is very remarkable that the Irish versions of the stories and ballads are, as compared with those of Scotland, characterised by more magnificent exaggerations and more gorgeous romance. The glow of richer eloquence and of a more splendid verbiage, combined at the same time with more of the sense of the ludicrous and incongruous, is felt as you tread the famous field of _Magh-lene_, or the more renowned scene of _Cathgarbh_ [Gabhra], or listen to the cleverly invented dialogues between Ossian and Patrick, in the company and under the guidance of the Irish Gaelic literati. This is worth noting, for it indicates how early essential differences began to develop between the two tribes of the same race. At this very day the natural eloquence of Irishmen (proverbially all born orators) far transcends that of Highlanders, whose hardy native hills appear to have made them generally more men of brave deeds than of eloquent good words. The richer soil and the softer climate of Ireland have had a more emasculating influence on the Irish brother tribes; but nature is not always unkind; this possible disadvantage is more than counterbalanced by the rich flow, suavity, and sweetness of the Irish tongue. It is not only the eloquence but the peculiar character of Irish wit and humour that is traceable in Eire’s versions of the Celtic romances. There is also a stationary element observable in the history of the nation. The pre-Celtic, Celtic or Finian Ireland is very much to-day what it was upwards of a thousand years ago. St. Patrick may have made the most of Ireland nominally Christian but the essential heathenism of many of the people has never been yet eradicated; nor was it in the Highlands till this century, deeply and powerfully as the people were touched by drastic ecclesiastical and political changes. A Highland bard of great natural abilities and poetic endowments—William Livingston—has very well expressed in an interesting poem, “Eirin a’ gul” (Erin weeping), his satisfied conviction that the people have never changed. Livingston sang as a Scottish Gael of the pre-Reformation days would. He had as little regard for his Holiness in Rome as he had for the late Rev. Principal Candlish, of Edinburgh, when the latter was preaching in Greenock, and Livingston assumed a threatening attitude as if he would dirk the preacher, who had the temerity to touch up the Highlanders—about the Sustentation Fund, I suppose. It is melancholy to observe—especially suggestive to those who make so much of our boasted advancement in civilisation—that the Gaelic peasantry of Munster to-day cannot show that they have risen higher on the steps of their ancestral dead selves than what they were when the Gaelic ballads were first rehearsed on the glens and bens of ancient _Muiman_. The same remark till recently was applicable to many parts of the Highlands.