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“ Have no dread, Holy Patrick; all their maliceShall never hurt thy person. Heaven doth lookWith scorn upon their treachery; thou artReserv’d to make this Nation glorious,

By their conversion to the Christian faith,

Which shall, by blood of many martyrs, growTill it be call’d the Island of the Saints.”

shirley’s st. Patrick for Ireland.

OWARDS the close of the year 1782 it wasthought proper that the King should manifesthis regard for Ireland by some public and gra-cious act of favour; and it was the policy of theAdministration, of which an eminent Irish No-bleman, the Earl of Shelburne, was the head, toconciliate the more powerful Peers of that King-dom by bestowing personal marks of Distinctionupon them. The constitution and limited number of Knights of the threeexisting British Orders made it inconvenient to apply those Decorations to thatpurpose; and it was perhaps deemed invidious that there should not be aNational Order for Ireland, then a separate Kingdom, while there were twoOrders of England, and one of Scotland.

These considerations induced His Majesty King George the Third to insti-tute a Fraternity of Knights in Ireland, formed on the plan of the Garter,