supposes all those oriental dialects to be of one language. The Scots, Scoti, Scuyti-Exv, or Scythians, are a colony of these Milesians. That they are of the same origin there is no doubt, for the Scotch highlanders can at this day converse with the Irish without any difficulty, and the dispute is not yet settled to which of them the poem of Ossian is due. This native Irish, which is the Gaèdhlic or Scotic, is the purest dialect of the ancient Celtic. The Welsh is also a dialect of it. What its influence was upon the sentiments of the heart, is proved from this, that Edward the First was obliged to destroy the Welsh Bards, by throwing them down their rocks in the sea, before he could subdue their country.

The barbarity of the English, the Danes and Normans, in destroying all the monuments of Scotch, Irish, or Welsh antiquity, has robbed the philosopher, if not the divine, of many a precious light.At all events, this wonderful affinity between Irish, Scythian, Scotch, Carthaginian, Welsh, Hebrew, Syriac, Persian, Shanscrite, and other ancient dialects, is a strong and interesting proof of holy writ: as it goes to prove, that at one time there was a universal language. But the use I shall make of it is, to shew the ignorant and provoking insults which the English have heaped upon the Irish; not only in the times of their own barbarity, but since letters had made progress among them. When Queen Elizabeth founded Trinity College, she would have had an Irish professor, but Lord Burleigh dissuaded her, saying, it was a barbarous language, and repeated illiberally

some phrase which he pretended was Irish, but which evidently was nonsense, and perhaps aukward enough in his mouth. You may remember it in Hume's history of England. The English of it, according to this historian is, that "the white ox eat the black egg!"

Now, upon the same illiberal scheme, if any Queen, for instance Queen Dido, who spoke good Phoenician, wished to have an English professor, and one of her favorites was to pronounce to her even in the courtliest manner, "Length, breadth, wedth, strength, thickness, thankfulness, and so forth, would it not shock the delicate ears of the queen, and damn e professor? Yet it would not be so unfair as to say that the white ox eat the black egg!" ·

When we consider that the Irish vernacular tongue was to be traced with little corruption to the highest antiquity, and identified with holy writ, there is something contemptibly stupid in this manner of treating it, and more so, when we consider that the language of the English, although long spoken by one of the first and the most learned nations of Europe, to the polish of which Parnell, Brook, the Sheridans, Burke, Goldsmith, Sterne, Swift, O'Leary, and a multitude of other Irishmen, have contributed so much, cannot yet be reduced to any rules of grammar, or spoken or written with any ordinary perspicuity: Look into an act of parliament where precision is necessary, or into a legal conveyance, and read the wheresoevers and whensoevers that aboundthe he's, the she's, and the they's; the any manner of

person or persons, thing or things, and such paraphrases and amplifications, which never could be necessary in a language possessing either concord or inflexion: and the crude origin and construction of which, taste, learning, or genius, has not been able to reform. Indeed, some of the very acts of parliament, enacting penalties against those that spake Irish, or dwelt amongst the Irishry, are such a queer compound of Danish, Norman hog-latin, and I dont know what, as to be the most biting satires upon the Englishry, and those that spake English. For we must acknowledge, that whatever our ancestors, the Irish, were, in the time of Strongbow, our ancestors, the English, were clumsy enough.You recollect it was about that time that the luxurious Thomas A. Becket was impeached for strewing his floors with green rushes, and other such effeminacies; and it is an authentic fact, that as late as that, our ancestors, the English, sold their children, and their pregnant wives, to our ancestors, the Irish, for slaves. The market was held, where now stands the great city of Liverpool. Some traces of wiveselling still exist in England.

Ancient Civilisation of the Irish.

THE proofs of ancient civilisation in Ireland are many, and that it was resorted to as a sanctuary of letters and learning, when other nations, now the most advanced, were semi-barbarous. Its remote

situation might have favored it in this respect, by protecting it from the inroads of pirates and invaders. At the council of Constance, the English ambassadors were only admitted in right of Ireland, as a nation of higher and more ancient rank: for England had been conquered, they said, by the Romans, and was part of the empire. King Alfred, according to Venerable Bede, was educated in Ireland: and the Anglo-Saxon, King Oswald, applied to Ireland for learned men to teach his people Christianity. Henrick, of St. Germain, in the reign of Charles the bald, says of the Irish, "Almost the whole nation, despising the dangers of the sea, resort to our coasts with a numerous train of philosophers." And in a tapestry at Versailles, representing Charlemagne, amongst the kings in friendship with him, there was a king of Ireland with his harp. There is a harp in Trinity College, Dublin, said to be as old as Brian Boirume, who fell at the battle of Clontarf, anno. 1014. This harp, and their ancient music, are very curious and indisputable proofs: as no instrument known to the ancient nations had the same number of strings; nor was the counterpoint or harmony known to them; nor is there any vestige of it until of very late date, in Italy or Germany, the modern schools of music.

Gerald Barry, called Geraldus Cambrensis, employed by Henry II. to vilify the Irish, could not resist the charms of their music, and endeavors to describe the effect of a treble and base in a way that proves it was new to him, and speaks in admiration

of the manner in which the subject in their music was sometimes transferred to the lower strings; and then, after many delightful, modulations, arose out of its sweet confusion, and became distinct above. I have not the book, otherwise I could cite the passage. King James also is said to have boasted his Irish origin and King James had the pride of ancestry.

The great epoch of Irish civilisation appears to be the reign of Ollam Fodlha, according to Keating, about 950 years before the Christian æra. It was he who instituted the great council or Fes of Teamor or Tarah, consisting of Druids and other learned men, representatives of the nation. He is said to have been a great prince and law-giver; and in the magnificent accounts of that assembly, are the first traces of Irish history.

But the fairest proof is, the easy reception the gospel met with in the fifth century, when St. Patrick, a Exubos, or Scot, sent by Pope Celestin to preach Christianity. So much did that mild religion coincide with the sentiments of the Irish, that what never happened in any other country, it was inforced by persuasion alone, and without the shedding of one drop of blood. And five years after St. Patrick.opened his mission, so hospitably was he received, that he was summoned to the grand council at Tarah-as we should say in modern phrase, made a member of parliament, and put upon a committee of nine, to reform the civil history, and make it useful to posterity.