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NOTES. 397Antiquity of the Irish Manuscripts.Ireland, and its early history, have been long viewed througha dark cloud of prejudice. It is the most remote, and probablythe last inhabited of all the Celtic districts.In Italy, in Spain,in Germany, in Gaul, not a single Celtic manuscript has beenpreserved.In Wales, and the Highlands of Scotland, we havea few, but Ireland itself boasts of an infinitely greater numberthan all the other Celtic nations taken together, Ireland, atfirst sight, promises least, whilst its pretensions are apparently"extravagant and unbounded.This seeming incongruity has inducedthe bulk of mankind, without enquiry or consideration,to pronounce its manuscripts mere modern forgeries, and its historyutterly fabulous and absurd.Singularly, however, as Irelandis in these respects circumstanced, it is not without a paraLlei.Judea, a century prior to the christian oera, was known tothe Greeks and Romans hardly otherwise than by name.Taci«tus, who wrote about the beginning of the second ceiitury, givesus an account of the Jews totally false and ridiculous.Justin,who wrote a century and a half later, i? equally false and fabu^ious. It was Christianity alone (the best boon of heaven tomankind) which made their history and antiquitiesto be investigated and respected. Had Ethnicism still prevailed in theworld, the history of the Jews (though the most ancient, as wellas the only authentic one) would, without doubt, have been, atthepresent day, treated with more contempt and ridicule thaneven that of Ireland.That there is no nation in the world which makes high preten^sions to antiquity, without being in some measure entitled to it,may safely be granted. This we knew to be the case with theJews, the Ch^deans, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Greeks,and the Romans, &c. The Celts (of whom the Irish are a3 E