“Manuscripts, annals, and records are not the treasures of a colonized or conquered country,” said the priest; “it is always the policy of the conqueror, or the invader, to destroy those mementi of ancient national splendour which keep alive the spirit of the conquered or the invaded; * the dispersion at various periods ** of many of the most illustrious Irish families into foreign countries, has assisted the depredations of time and policy, in the plunder of her literary treasures; many of them are now mouldering in public and private libraries on the Continent, whither their possessors conveyed them from the destruction which civil war carries with it, and many of them (even so far back as Elizabeth’s day) were conveyed to Denmark. The Danish monarch applied to the English court for some learned men to translate them, and one _Donald O’Daly_, a person eminently qualified for the task, was actually engaged to perform it, until the illiberality of the English court prevented the intention on the poor plea of its prejudicing the English interest.” * Sir George Carevy, in the reign of Elizabeth, was accused of bribing the family historian of the McCarthies to convey to him some curious MSS. “But what,” says the author of the Analect, “Carevy did in one province [Munster] Henry Sidney, and his predecessors did all over the kingdom, being charged to collect all the manuscripts they could, that they might effectually destroy every vestige of antiquity and letters throughout the Kingdom.” And St. Patrick, in his apostolic zeal, committed to the flames several hundred druidical volumes. ** Fourteen thousand Irish took advantage of the articles of Limerick, and bade adieu to their native country forever. “I know myself that many of our finest and most valuable MSS. are in libraries in France, and have heard, that not a few of them enrich the Vatican at Rome.” * * In a conversation which passed in Cork between the author’s father and the celebrated Dr. O’Leary, the latter said he had once intended to have written a history of Ireland. And added, “but, in truth, I found, after various researches, that I could not give such a history as I would wish should come from my pen, without visiting the Continent, more particularly Rome, where alone the best documents for the history of Ireland are to be had. But it is now too late in the day for me to think of such a journey or such exertions as the task would require.” “Mr. O’Halloran informs me [says Mr. Walker, in his Memoirs of the Irish Bards, p. 141], that he lately got in a collection from Rome, several poems of the most eminent Bards of last centuries.” “But,” said I, “are not many of those MSS. supposed to be monkish impositions?”