Many reasons have prevented the writing of Irish history. The invading people effaced the monuments of a society they had determined to extirpate, and so effectively extinguished the memory of that civilization that it will need a generation of students to recover and interpret its records. The people of the soil have been in their subjugation debarred from the very sources of learn ing, and from the opportunities of study and association which are necessary for the historical scholar. The subject too has transcended the courage of the Irish patriot. Histories of nations have been inspired in'times of hope and confidence, when the record of triumph has kindled the writers and gladdened the readers. The only story of a decline and fall was composed when the dividing width of Europe, with the Span of a dozen centuries, and the proud consciousness of the heir of the conquering race, encouraged the historian to describe the catastrophe of a ruined State. Thus the history of the Irish people has been left unrecorded, as though it had never been; as though indeed, according to some, the history were one or dishonour and rebuke.