A new edition of Toland's History of the druids: - Free History Ebooks

416 NOTES.greatly exaggerated, otherwise Pinkarton would have animadirertedon it with bis usual seienty* The Chaldeans and Chinesecarry their chronology as high as 200,000 years. The ^$^'gyplianspretend to authentic records for more than 20,000 years.The Athenians superseded all chronology whatever, by pretendingthat they were Autochthones— i. e. Earth.born, or sprungfrom the soil which they inhabited. Nay Pinkarton himself (asformerly noticed) assigns to his belored Goths or Scythians aprobable endurance of many millions of years. The date, therefore,assigned by the Irish for the first population of Ireland^though perhaps over-rated a few centuries, is such an instance ofchronological modesty as has no parallel in any of the nations ofremote antiquity. Chronology is the very soul of history. Indeed,what is commonly denominated fable or tradition, is generallynothing else than historical facts, divested of chronologi.cal arrangement and accuracy.The Irish historians are pretty uniform in fixing the institn.tion of a grand seminary of learning at Tarab, about eight centaviesprior to the Christian aBra. That there -were similar esta,blishments in Gaul and Britain sixty years prior to our sera, isclearly proved by Caesar. Nay, what is still more extraordinary,he assigns the decided pre-eminence and superiority to the Britishschools. Is it then in the slightest degree incredible thaithe Irish, descended from the same Celtic stock as the Gaulsand Britons, should have the same literary institutions? The li,terary attainments ascribed to the Druids by Caesar, and otherRoman historians, could not have been the result of less than athousand years study. It is impos'sible to fix the exact sera ofthe first establishment of literary seminaries in Gaul and Britain.But from the circumstances stated hj Caesar, that the Britishschools greatly excelled those of Gaul, and that the discipline ofthe Druids was supposed to ha?e been invented in Britain, andthence transferred into Gaul, we are clearly authorized to infer,that these estabrishments were of remote antiquity. That Britainwas peopled from Gaul, and derived Druidism from thesame source^ can admit of no dcubt. Many centmies must