tant from each other, so tribal wars were prolonged, and the 

 unity of the country hindered. In a similar way Professor Free- 

 man says we may account for the isolation of the small states 

 which occupied the Grecian peninsula. It was the absence of 

 such massive and forbidding barriers in England which laid it 

 more open to invasion, and to be more readily occupied, as the 

 mvaders were driven further west by new arrivals, and which 

 afterwards made it more easy to reduce the whole country to 

 obedience to one government — a task which was not really accom- 

 plished in Scotland until the close of the last century. I need not 

 dwell on the obvious commercial advantages possessed by Great 

 Britain i<n consequence of its severance from, and proximity to 

 Europe, — the two " together, yet apart." Let me for a moment 

 call your attention to the great advantage possessed by Ireland in 

 early times in consequence of its isolation and sheltered position. 

 Ireland was separated first, yet not before it had received 

 human inhabitants ; this was long before Britain was free from the 

 continent ; and the latter when it became an island, saved the 

 former for many years from the evils which afflicted itself. While 

 Saxon and Dane were harrying and conquering England along its 

 eastern and southern shores, Ireland, protected as by a gigantic 

 breakwater or line of defence, formed the home of religion and the 

 resort of learning for all Europe ; the asylum of persecuted monks 

 and ardent students. Even earher still, Mr. Justin H. McCarthy 

 tells us, Ireland had made considerable progress in civilization, and 

 Was fairly prosperous, rearing sheep, cattle, pigs, and horses, and 

 exporting metallic ore and slaves to the Mediterranean, being appa- 

 rently in advance of the contemporary Britons. Christianity 

 appears to have spread rapidly, and for a long time all Christendom 

 looked upon Ireland as the favourite home of rehgion and wisdom." 

 But such could not have been the case had Ireland preserved its 

 land connection with Great Britain ; it was all owing to geological 

 action giving it its sheltered situation. Similar advantages were 

 possessed by the small island of lona off the west of Scotland. 



But the vigorous onward progress of those terrible Norsemen 

 brought them round to Ireland at last. In the eighth century they 

 effected a settlement, murdered the clergy, and " drove out the 

 Irish scholars to carry their culture and their philosophy" else- 

 where. And these Norsemen, and this misfortune to Ireland, were 

 the result of the effects of the physical geography of another coun- 

 try which had developed a race of such intrepid seamen and pirates. 



The dependence of early English history on the nature of the 

 country is well and clearly worked out by the late Mr. Green in his 

 book on " The Making of England," and is the best example I 

 know of the interv/eaving of the two subjects. 



All the lowland districts of England at the time of the Roman 



