filled their minds with sweet and lovely images through their stories of the girl saints who had been their own unseen but constant companions in cell, and garden, and church; they turned them steadily to the imitation of the virtues by which the Elizabeths, the Cecilias, the Catherines, the Agneses had won their place as hand-maidens of the Heavenly Queen. Footnote 37: “Annals of Irish Harpers,” p. 179. There is no story more beautiful in our national annals than the story—yet untold in its completeness—of the Irish nuns during the ages of persecution. We see them avail themselves of the slightest lull in the storm to found their convents, and carry out the _Magnum Opus_ to which they had vowed their life. The days of the Confederation of Kilkenny saw the foundation of the Dominican Convent at Galway,[38] the days of James II saw its restoration, and the establishment of the Benedictines in Dublin. To such institutions the Catholic gentry sent their daughters to be educated, and we have only to turn to the pages of O’Heyne[39] to learn what manner of women these were who had the training of their young compatriots. Footnote 38: O’Heyne states that the convent was established at the end of the reign of James I. but it was only in 1644 that the church was built and a house arranged in conventural style. The foundation was confirmed by Rinuccini in 1647. Footnote 39: Admirably edited by Rev. Ambrose Coleman, O.P., who has contributed an Appendix full of the most valuable historical information (Dundalk, 1902). We see the heroic and saintly Prioress of the Dominican Nuns in Galway, Juliana Nolan, “a woman of heroic fortitude in bearing every kind of adversity, and very firm in observance and the gaining of virtues”; her successor, Mary Lynch, who taught school in Spain before her return to Galway, “a most religious woman and of great capacity for ruling and instructing”; and above all Mary O’Halloran, than whom, O’Heyne declares, he had never known a woman of stronger intellect. “She had a more accurate acquaintance with the Spanish tongue than the Spaniards themselves, and was well versed in sacred and profane history.”