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416 NOTES.
greatly exaggetatea, otherwise Pinkartofi would have anfrrau.
Tsrted on it with his usual severity. The Chaldeans and Chines*
carry their chronology as high as 200,000 years. The JEgJltians
pretfend to authentic records for more than 20,000 years.
The Athenians superseded all chronology whatever, by pretend,
ing that they were Autochthones—i. e. Earth-born, ct sprung
from the soil which they inhabited. Nay Pinkarton himself (as
formerly noticed} assigns to his beloved Goths or Scythians a
probable endurance of many millions of years. The date, therefore,
assigned by the Irish Cor the first population of Ireland,
though perhaps over.rated a few centuries, is such an instance of
chronological modesty as has no parallel in any of the nations of
remote antiquity. Chronology is the very soul of history. In.
deed, what is commonly denominated fable or tradition, is gene.
rally nothing else than historical facts, divested of chronological
ariAngement and accuracy.
The Irish historians are pretty uniform in fixing the instita.
tion of a grand seminary of learning at Tarah, about eight centu.
Ties prior to the Christian>xra. That there were similar estn.
blishments in Gaul and Britain sixty years prior to our xra, is
clearly proved by C»sar. Nay, what is still more extraordinary,
he assigns the decided' pre.emiuence and superiority to the Bri.
tish schools. Is it then in the slightest degree incredible that
the Irish, descended from the same Celtic stock as the Gauls
and Brhotrs, should have the same literary institutions? The li.
tcrary attainments ascribed to the Druids by Cxsaii^ and other
Roman historians, could not have been the result of less than a
thousand years study. It is impossible to fix the exact »ra of
the first establishment of literary seminaries in Gaul and Britain.
But from the circumstances stated by Caesar, that the British
schools grpatly excsUed those of Gaul, andthat the discipline of
the Druids was supposed to have been invented in Britain and
thence transferred into Gaul, we are clearly authorized to infer,
tliat-these establishments were of remote antiquity. That Britain
was peopled from Gaul," and derived Druidisra from the
same source, can admit of no doubt. Mpiiy centuries most