Читать книгу The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891 онлайн

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This society of students was then, as it has ever since been, very various in race, social position, and parentage, and to this not a little of its great intellectual activity may be traced. It should also be added here that one of the strongest natural reasons for the great prominence of the Anglo-Irish, and the extraordinary distinctions they have attained in every great development of the British Empire, is that the English settlers of Elizabethan and Jacobean days were the boldest adventurers, the young men (often of good family) of the greatest energy and courage, to be found among the youth of England. They came to incur great risks, to brave many dangers, but to attain great rewards. The rapidity of promotion among the ecclesiastics, for example, is quite astonishing: Bishops at 30, Archbishops and Chancellors at 40, are not uncommon. And if these daring adventurers were often unscrupulous, at all events they and their quick-witted Irish wives produced a most uncommon offspring.