Excerpt from The Irish Nation, Its History and Its Biography, Vol. 1 Among the popular impressions, unfavourable to the claim of our ancient history, the most prominent is due to the marked and clinging barbarism, which is the most characteristic feature of our middle ages. It seems difficult for incredulity to admit, that a race which, from the earliest period of the modern world - from the Danish settle ments to the very date of our immediate ancestors in the beginning of the last century - seems to have preserved the characters of national infancy, can possibly have the claims to a mature antiquity, which antiquaries, however their creeds may differ, agree in affirming. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.