of this mine be attributed to the Danes, who were unaccustomed to such patient, and scienti fic labours. What shall we say, then, of these Irish barbarians, and of their country, cursed, as it is described, as a wilderness of forests and bogs? Do savage people ransack the bowels of the earth for coal, while their woods and turf afford such abundant fuel to their land? In the reign of Edward the First of England, coal, after being tried in London, was immediately prohibited as noxious. But, you will recollect what I have already said on this subject.

Of the Druids, I have spoken at large. A word of two more, however, on what appears relative to them from the history of the Irish. Many antiquarians, from the authority of Cæsar, give the institution of Druidism to Britain; and probably they, as well as their authority, are in the right. Druidism might have arisen in the western hemisphere, from the mixed colonies of Pelasgians, &c. who found their way into the British isles. But, Britain was not the birth-place of Druidism.* Dr. Borlase was surprized at the conformity in temples, priests, worship, doctrines, and divinations, between two such distant people as the

* Vallancy.

The Irish language abounds with Eastern terms. Most of the Persian names of the Supreme God, of the demons, the peri, the angels, &c. are still preserved in the Irish. Even the Persian names of the priests of the Ghebres, are Irish. These, surely, were not derived from the Romans; neither can they, without much violence to common sense, be supposed the fabrication of monks of the sixth, seventh, or eighth centuries. Attend to the following words, which are a few, out of hundreds of radicals and derivatives, which are to be adduced on the subject. They are indiscriminately picked out, and are all taken from the Sanskreet, Arabic and Persian.

the Grecians could not have introduced the worship of Ceres and Prosperine. To whom, then, were they indebted for these divinities? To the Phoenicians? Apollo, we are told, was the principal god of the Pagan Irish, and that it is because the harp was sacred to him, that this instrument is the ensign armorial of Ireland. The worship of Baal, we are likewise told, was known to the Iberno-Celts. The name of Baal, which signifies Dominus, was the first name of the true God. Afterwards it was, by express command, changed, when the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Phoenicians, bestowed that sacred name upon the sun.

The Pagan Irish never admitted the modern deities of the Greeks or Romans into their worship; even to the days of St. Patrick, their rites were purely Assyrian.† And, at the same time, the Irish Druids, like their Scythian ancestors, permitted no image worship. The unchisseled stone was the only emblem used by all ancient nations. The Chinese and Hindoos still retain this stone, though their pagodas are crowded with images; and Pausanias declares, that all the ancient Greeks had no other emblem of their deities. Before the time of Mahommed,

hommed, the Arabs had no other; and the mater deorum of the Romans, was a rough, black stone.

I am now arrived nearly at the close of this intricate and obscure investigation. I will not flatter myself with the hope, of having entirely satisfied you upon this subject. I will, however, venture to say, as far as fairness of intention goes, I have entirely satisfied myself. The sketch is, indeed, a meagre one. But, you must look upon it with indulgence, and as you would upon a description in your favourite Ossian. The scenery throughout is wild and romantic. The extended heath by the sea shore; the mountain shaded with mist; the torrent, rushing through a solitary valley; the scattered oaks, and the tomb of warriors, overgrown with moss; all these demand attention. They, at least, lead us "to the voice of years that are gone; to the years that roll before us, with all their deeds."*

In regard to the first communications between Caledonia and Ireland, tradition is silent. Orosius, however, who lived in the fourth century, says, Hibernia Scotorum gentibus collitur.

In process of time, says venerable Bede, the country of Britain, after it had been inhabited by the Britons and Picts, was possessed, on the side of the Picts, by a nation of the Scots, who came out of Ireland, and made themselves masters of those lands, which they enjoy to this day, either by friendship or by force. Giraldus Cambrensis expresses himself in similar terms; speaking of the Irish, he says, "Gens ab his propagata specificato vocabulo Scotica vocatur in hodiernum."

One apparently strong reason, indeed, is advanced against the Scots migration from Ireland into Caledonia, says Mr. Whitaker, for it is said, if they were compelled by poverty, or from being overstocked, to go in quest of foreign settlements, they ought, in common prudence, to have tried their fortune in the southern division of the country, and not in the steile mountains of the western Caledonia. But, Bede is explicit and satisfactory upon this point. "Est, autem sinus maris permaximus, qui antiquitus gentem Britonum a Pictis secernebat, qui ab occidente in terras longo spatio erumpit, ubi est civitas Britonum munitissima usque hodie, quæ vocatur Alchuth: ad cujus videlicet sinûs partem septentrionalem Scotti, quos diximus,