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502 KOTES.to their contemplative studies, and transferred their chief schoolto Britain. On the invasion of Britain by the Romans, theyirould doubtless use the same precaution, and transfer theirrecordsand chief establishment to Ireland.This sufficiently accountsfor the number and antiquity of the Irish manuscripts.The Irish were Celts, and certainly had their Druidical establishmentslong prior to this period. And there cannot remain adoubt that the British Druids found Ireland their last asylum.That an order of men, so numerous, so learned, and so highlyenerated by all ranks, should have totally disappeared, on thearrival of St. Patrick, is not once to be imagined. On the testi.mony of Giraldus Cambrensis (quoted by Mr. Toland inthe6th note on his first letter) there never was a martyr to Christianityin Ireland, so that the Druids did not fall victims to thenew crder of things. Another proof that the Druids madelittle or no resistance to Christianity is St. Patrick's burningfrom 180 to 300 -volumes of their records, as related by DudleyForbes and Dr. Kennedy^ see Toland's history, page 105.That any individual, however respectable, could have compelledthe Druids to give up their records, in order to be destroyed, 19not once to be imagined ;and this great sacrifice must be consideredas a voluntary act of piety, similar to that recorded in theiActs oi the Apostles, ch, 19. v. 19. St, Patrick's priECursorjPalladius (see Pinkarton, v. 2. p. 263.) was wholly unsuccessfulin his mission to Ireland, and found it in a state of Paganism.St. Patrick's success was, probably, in a great measure, owingto his using the Druidical temples as places of worship, and gainingover to his interest the Druids, the then established clergy,by which means the deeply rooted pr'^judices of the nation werein a great measure complied with, and at any rate not directlythwarted. The numerous places of christian worship still beginningwith the word KH in Ireland and Scothmd, which is thepiost appropriate Gaelic name for a temple, clearly indiccite thatthey were Druidical temples appropriated to the purposes ofChristianity.In If eland, the Culdees seem to have risen to little or no ems-