* “It should seem.” says Mr. Walker, in his ingenious and elegant essay on Ancient Irish Dress--“that Ireland teemed with gold and silver, for as well as in the laws recited, we find an act ordained 34th, Henry VIII, ‘that merchant strangers should pay 40 pence custom for every pound of silver they carried out of Ireland; and Lord Stratford, in one of his letters from Dublin to his royal master, says, ‘with this I land you an ingot of silver of 300 oz.’” ** Pearls abounded, and still are found in this country and were of such repute in the 11th century, that a present of them was sent to the famous Bishop Anselm, by a Bishop of Limerick. *** The author is indebted to Mr. Knox, barrister at law, Dublin, for the sight of some beautiful amethysts, which belonged to his female ancestors, and which many of the lapidaries of London, after a diligent search, found it impossible to match. “I remember reading in the life of St. Bridget, that the King of Leinster presented to her father a sword set with precious stones, which the pious saint, more charitable than honest, devoutly stole, and sold for the benefit of the poor; but it should seem that the sources of our national treasures are now shut up like the gold mines of La Valais, for the public weal, I suppose; for we now hear not of amethysts found, pearls discovered, or gold mines worked; and it is to the caskets of my female ancestors that I stand indebted that my dress or hair is not fastened or adorned like those of my humbler countrywomen, with a wooden bodkin.” “That, indeed,” said I, “is a species of ornament I have observed very prevalent with your fair ‘_paysannes_; and of whatever materials it is made, when employed in such a happy service as I _now_ behold it, has an air of simple, useful elegance, which in my opinion constitutes the great art of female dress.” “It is at least,” replied she, “the most ancient ornament we know here--for we are told that the celebrated palace of Emania, * erected previous to the Christian era, was sketched by the famous Irish Empress Macha, with the bodkin. * The resident palace of the Kings of Ulster, of which Colgan speaks as “rendolens splendorum.” “I remember a passage from a curious and ancient romance in the Irish language, that fastened wonderfully upon my imagination when I read it to my father in my childhood, and which gives to the bodkin a very early origin:--it ran thus, and is called the ‘_Interview between Fionn M’Cnmhal and Cannan_.’