It has been often said that the literature of the Celts of Ireland was much more extensive than that of the Celts of Scotland--that the former were in fact a more literary people--that the ecclesiastics, and medical men, and historians (_seanachies_) of Scotland had less culture than those of the sister island, and that they must be held thus to have been a stage behind them in civilisation and progress. Judging by the remains which exist, there seems to be considerable ground for such a conclusion. Scotland can produce nothing like the MS. collections in possession of Trinity College Dublin, or the Royal Irish Academy. There are numerous fragments of considerable value in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, and in the hands of private parties throughout Scotland, but there is nothing to compare with the Book of Lecan, _Leabhar na h-uidhre_, and the other remains of the ancient literary culture of Ireland, which exist among the collections now brought together in Dublin; nor with such remains of what is called Irish scholarship as are to be found in Milan, Brussels, and other places on the continent of Europe. At the same time there is room for questioning how far the claims of Ireland to the whole of that literature are good. Irish scholars are not backward in pressing the claims of their own country to everything of any interest that may be called Celtic. If we acquiesce in these claims, Scotland will be left without a shred of aught which she can call her own in the way of Celtic literature; and there is a class of Scottish scholars who, somewhat more generous than discriminating, have been disposed to acquiesce but too readily in those claims. We have our doubts as to Ireland having furnished Scotland with its Gaelic population, and we have still stronger doubts as to Ireland having been the source of all the Celtic literature which she claims. A certain class of writers are at once prepared to allow that the Bobbio MSS. and those other continental Gaelic MSS. of which Zeuss has made such admirable use in his _Grammatica Celtica_, are all Irish, and they are taken as illustrative alike of the zeal and culture of the early Irish Church. And yet there is no evidence of such being the case. The language certainly is not Irish, nor are the names of such of the writers as are usually associated with the writings. Columbanus, the founder of the Bobbio Institution, may have been an Irishman, but he may have been a Scotchman. He may have gone from Durrow, but he may have gone from Iona. The latter was no less famous than the former, and had a staff of men quite as remarkable. We have authentic information regarding its ancient history. It sent out Aidan to Northumberland, and numerous successors after him, and there is much presumptive evidence that many of these early missionaries took their departure from Scotland, and carried with them their Scottish literature to the Continent of Europe. And the language of the writers is no evidence