GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS, whose name in its Norman-English form was “Gerald de Barry,” wrote an “Itinerary through Wales” and a collection of detached comments and essays on “The Topography of Ireland,” which no student of the quaint and curious in literature can afford to miss. Giraldus is a prodigy both of learning and of ignorance. Few of the most learned men of his time were his equals in familiarity with the classics, and few children in ours are so ignorant of nearly everything else. He had, however, the true scientific spirit of inquiry; and while there is scarcely a page of his works without its absurdity, he is not deterred in the least by the fear of blundering from attempting to reason out the causes of everything. He was born near Pembroke, in Wales, about 1146, and was educated for the Church. In 1184 he was made Chaplain to King Henry II., and in 1198 he was promoted by Court influence to the Bishopric of St. David’s,—the Pope, however, refusing his sanction. Giraldus accompanied the expedition sent over for the conquest of Ireland, and wrote a history in two books based on his observations.