advancement in the art of architecture is, perhaps, one of the least fallible; but here again the historian is encountered by the same contrasts and inconsistencies, not merely between tradition and existing visible evidence, but also between the several remaining monuments themselves, of which some bespeak all the rudeness of an infant state of society, while others point to a far different origin, and stand as marks of a tide of civilization long since ebbed away. In the geography of Ptolemy, we find a number of Irish cities enumerated, on some of which he even bestows the epithet illustrious or distinguished; and intimates that, in two of them, the cities Hybernis and Rheba, celestial observations had been made. But though it is by no means improbable that, in the time of those more ancient geographers from whom Ptolemy is known to have drawn his materials, such cities may have existed, his testimony on this point is to be received with caution; as in Germany, where, at the time when Tacitus wrote, no other habitations were known than detached huts and caves, this geographer, who published his work but about half a century later, has contrived to conjure up no less than ninety cities. In the same manner, any inference that might be drawn in favour of the civilization of Ireland, from the supposition that those observations of the length of the solstitial days, by which the latitudes of the Irish cities were determined, had been really taken in those cities themselves, would prove, most probably, fallacious; as it is supposed that but few of the latitudes given by Ptolemy were the result of actual astronomical observation.f Of those ancient Raths, or Hill-fortresses, which formed the dwellings of the old Irish chiefs, and belonged evidently to a period when cities were not in existence, there are to be found numerous remains throughout the country. This species of earthen work is distinguished from the artificial mounds, or trumuli, by its being formed upon natural elevations, and always surrounded by a rampart. Within the area thus enclosed, which was called the Rath, stood the habitations of the chieftain and his family, which were, in general, small buildings constructed of earth and hurdles, or having, in some instances, walls of wood upon a foundation of earth. In outward shape, as I have said, these dwellings of the living resembled those mounds which the Irish raised over their dead; and it is conjectured of the ancient earthen works on the Curragh of Kildare, that while the larger rath was the dwelling of the ancient chieftains of that district, the small entrenchments formed their cemetery or burial-place. If thus uncivilized were the habitations of the great dynasts of those days, it may be imagined what were the abodes of the humbler classes of the community;-though here, unfortunately, the imagination is not called upon for any effort; as, in the cottier's cabin of the present day, the disgraceful reality still exists: and two thousand years have passed over the hovel of the Irish pauper in vain. A degree still lower, however, on the scale of comfort, would have been the lot of the ancient Irish, were it true, as Ledwich and others have asserted, that they lived chiefly, in the manner of the Troglodytes, in subterranean caves. That some of those caverns, of which so great a number, both artificial and natural, have been discovered throughout Ireland, may have been used as places of refuge for the women and children during times of danger and invasion, appears to be highly probable. We find some of them described as divided into apartments, and even denoting an attempt at elegance in their construction. They have also sometimes sustaining walls of dry stone-work, to confine the sides and support the flags which form the ceiling. But though they are pronounced to have been evidently subterranean houses, it is difficult to conceive human beings reduced to such abodes.+ It was among a people thus little removed from the state of the Germans in the time of Tacitus, that the Palaces of Tara and Emania, as authentic records leave us but little room to doubt, displayed their regal halls, and, however skepticism may now question their architectural merits, could boast the admiration of many a century in evidence of their grandeur. That these edifices were merely of wood is by no means conclusive either against the elegance of their structure, or the civilization, to a certain degree, of those Της δε Ιουεργίας νησε αι επίσημοι πολεις. "Quant à la durée du jour solstitial, nous avons dejà dit, et nous verrons occasion de prouver encore, que la très grande partie de ces espèces de déterminations contenues dans le huitième livre de Ptolémée n'étoit le résultat d'aucune observation astronomique, et qu'elle n'étoit conclue que d'après les latitudes adop. tées de son tems; ainsi on ne peut leur accorder aucune confiance quand elles ne sont pas apuyées sur le témoignage de quelques autres écrivains."-Gosselin, Recherches sur la Géographie des Anciens. "Some of them are excavated into the hard gravel, with the flags resting on no other support; and so low that you can only sit erect in them; that is, from three to four feet from the floor to the ceiling. I have not seen any higher than four feet. naries they could never have been intended, as it would have been very difficult to convey grain into them, The tradition of the country makes them granaries; but for gra through long and narrow passages, not more than two feet square."-Description of a remarkable Building &c., by F. C. Bland, Trans. R. Irish Acad, vol. xiv. See, for similar "hiding-pits," as he calls them, among the Britons, King Munimeut, Antiq. book i. chapt. I. who erected them. It was in wood that the graceful forms of Grecian architecture first unfolded their beauty; and there is reason to believe that, at the time when Xerxes, invaded Greece, most of her temples were still of this perishable material. Not to lay too much stress, however, on these boasted structures of ancient Ireland, of which there is but dry and meager mention by her annalists, and most hyperbolical descriptions by her bards, there needs no more striking illustration of the strong contrast which her antiquities present, than that, in the very neighbourhood of the earthen rath and the cave, there should rise proudly aloft those wonderful Round Towers, bespeaking, in their workmanship and presumed purposes, a connexion with religion and science, which marks their builders to have been of a race advanced in civilization and knowledge,-a race different, it is clear, from any of those who are known, from time to time, to have established themselves in the country, and, therefore, most probably, the old original inhabitants, in days when the arts were not yet strangers on their shores. There are yet a few other facts, strongly illustrative of this peculiar view of our antiquities, to which it may be worth while briefly to advert. Respecting the dress of the ancient Irish, we have no satisfactory information. In an account given of them by a Roman writer of the third century, they are represented as being half naked;* and the Briton Gildas, who wrote about three hundred years after, has drawn much the same picture of them. It was only in battle however, that they appear to have presented themselves in this barbarian fashion; and a similar custom prevailed also among the ancient Britons and Picts. But, though no particulars of the dress of the Irish, in those remote times, have reached us, enough may be collected from the accounts of a later period, when they had become more known to Europe, to satisfy us that the Milesian lord of the rath and the plebeian of the hovel had as little advanced on the scale of civilization in their dress as in their dwellings; and that, while the latter was most probably clothed, like the lower order of Britons, in sheepskin, the chief himself wore the short woollen mantle, such as was customary, at a later period, among his countrymen, and which, according to some authorities, reached no farther than the elbows; leaving, like the Rheno, or short mantle of the ancient Germans, the remainder of the body entirely naked. There is reason to believe, however, that at that time, as well as subsequently, they may have worn coverings for the thighs and legs, or at least that sort of petticoat, or fallin, as it was called, which is known to have been worn, as well as the braccæ, by the Irish, in the time of Giraldus Cambrensis. { Such having been the rude state of the ancient Irish, within any range of time to which our knowledge of them extends, it remains to be asked, to whom then, to what race or period, could have belonged those relics of an age of comparative refinement, those curious and costly ornaments of dress, some of the purest gold, elaborately wrought, and others of silver, which have been discovered, from time to time, in different parts of Ireland, having been dug up out of fields and bogs where they must have lain hidden for ages? Nor is it only of ornaments for the person that these precious remains consist; as there are found also among them instruments supposed to have been connected with religious worship, which are said to be of the finest gold, without any alloy, and to have, some of them, handles of silver, chased with plated gold. In like manner, a variety of Adhuc semi-nudi.-Eumen. Panegyric. Vet. † Magis vultus pillus quam corporum pudenda, pudendisque proxima, vestibus tegentes-Gildas. Pellibus aut parvis rhenonum tergismentis utuntur, magna corporis parte nuda.-Cas. de Bell. Gall. 1. vi. c. 21. § In their dress, as well as in most other respects, to attempt to distinguish very definitely between the Celts and Teutons will be found a vain and fallacious task. We have seen that the Irish and Gaulish Celts were fond of variegated dresses; and so, it appears, were the Lombards and Anglo-Saxons. "Vestimenta (says Diaconus, I. iv. c. 7..) qualia Angli-Saxones habere solent, ornata institis latioribus, vario colore con. textis." The bracce of the Irish were, like those of the Germans, tight, while the Sarmatians and Batavians preferred them large and loose. "Et qui te laxis imitantur, Sarmata, braccis "Within the limits of my own knowledge," says the Rev. W. Hamilton, "golden ornaments have been found to the amount of near one thousand pounds "-Letters Concerning the Coast of Antrim. The superior richness of the urns and ornaments discovered in Ireland, compare with those found in the English barrows, is fully acknowledged by Sir Richard Hoare. "The Irish urns were," he says, "in general, more ornamented," and the articles of gold, also, "richer and more numerous."-Tour in Ireland, General Remarks. See Gough's Camden, vol. iv. Collectan. Hibern. vol. iv. Among other curious Irish remains, bishop Pocoke produced to the Antiquarian Society a bracelet, or armilla, of fine gold. See drawing of this and a gold bracelet in Gough, vol. iv. pl. 14. Also plate 12. for some curious instruments, supposed by Pocoke to be fibulæ, while Simon and Vallancey are both of opinion that they were pateræ, used by the ancient Druids. Among the most beautiful of the ornaments discovered in Ireland have been those golden torques or collars. supposed to have been worn by the Irish Druids, as, according to Strabo, they were by the Gauls. One of these, of delicate workmanship, and of the purest gold, is in the possession of the Marquis of Langsdowne. advancement in the art of architecture is, perhaps, one of the least fallible; but here again the historian is encountered by the same contrasts and inconsistencies,-not merely between tradition and existing visible evidence, but also between the several remaining monuments themselves, of which some bespeak all the rudeness of an infant state of society, while others point to a far different origin, and stand as marks of a tide of civilization long since ebbed away. In the geography of Ptolemy, we find a number of Irish cities enumerated, on some of which he even bestows the epithet illustrious or distinguished; and intimates that, in two of them, the cities Hybernis and Rheba, celestial observations had been made. But though it is by no means improbable that, in the time of those more ancient geographers from whom Ptolemy is known to have drawn his materials, such cities may have existed, his testimony on this point is to be received with caution; as in Germany, where, at the time when Tacitus wrote, no other habitations were known than detached huts and caves, this geographer, who published his work but about half a century later, has contrived to conjure up no less than ninety cities. In the same manner, any inference that might be drawn in favour of the civilization of Ireland, from the supposition that those observations of the length of the solstitial days, by which the latitudes of the Irish cities were determined, had been really taken in those cities themselves, would prove, most probably, fallacious; as it is supposed that but few of the latitudes given by Ptolemy were the result of actual astronomical observation.† Of those ancient Raths, or Hill-fortresses, which formed the dwellings of the old Irish chiefs, and belonged evidently to a period when cities were not in existence, there are to be found numerous remains throughout the country. This species of earthen work is distinguished from the artificial mounds, or trumuli, by its being formed upon natural elevations, and always surrounded by a rampart. Within the area thus enclosed, which was called the Rath, stood the habitations of the chieftain and his family, which were, in general, small buildings constructed of earth and hurdles, or having, in some instances, walls of wood upon a foundation of earth. In outward shape, as I have said, these dwellings of the living resembled those mounds which the Irish raised over their dead; and it is conjectured of the ancient earthen works on the Curragh of Kildare, that while the larger rath was the dwelling of the ancient chieftains of that district, the small entrenchments formed their cemetery or burial-place. If thus uncivilized were the habitations of the great dynasts of those days, it may be imagined what were the abodes of the humbler classes of the community;-though here, unfortunately, the imagination is not called upon for any effort; as, in the cottier's cabin of the present day, the disgraceful reality still exists: and two thousand years have passed over the hovel of the Irish pauper in vain. A degree still lower, however, on the scale of comfort, would have been the lot of the ancient Irish, were it true, as Led wich and others have asserted, that they lived chiefly, in the manner of the Troglodytes, in subterranean caves. That some of those caverns, of which so great a number, both artificial and natural, have been discovered throughout Ireland, may have been used as places of refuge for the women and children during times of danger and invasion, appears to be highly probable. We find some of them described as divided into apartments, and even denoting an attempt at elegance in their construction. They have also sometimes sustaining walls of dry stone-work, to confine the sides and support the flags which form the ceiling. But though they are pronounced to have been evidently subterranean houses, it is difficult to conceive human beings reduced to such abodes. It was among a people thus little removed from the state of the Germans in the time of Tacitus, that the Palaces of Tara and Emania, as authentic records leave us but little room to doubt, displayed their regal halls, and, however skepticism may now question their architectural merits, could boast the admiration of many a century in evidence of their grandeur. That these edifices were merely of wood is by no means conclusive either against the elegance of their structure, or the civilization, to a certain degree, of those who erected them. It was in wood that the graceful forms of Grecian architecture first unfolded their beauty; and there is reason to believe that, at the time when Xerxes, invaded Greece, most of her temples were still of this perishable material. Not to lay too much stress, however, on these boasted structures of ancient Ireland, of which there is but dry and meager mention by her annalists, and most hyperbolical descriptions by her bards, there needs no more striking illustration of the strong contrast which her antiquities present, than that, in the very neighbourhood of the earthen rath and the cave, there should rise proudly aloft those wonderful Round Towers, bespeaking, in their workmanship and presumed purposes, a connexion with religion and science, which marks their builders to have been of a race advanced in civilization and knowledge,-a race different, it is clear, from any of those who are known, from time to time, to have established themselves in the country, and, therefore, most probably, the old original inhabitants, in days when the arts were not yet strangers on their shores. There are yet a few other facts, strongly illustrative of this peculiar view of our antiquities, to which it may be worth while briefly to advert. Respecting the dress of the ancient Irish, we have no satisfactory information. In an account given of them by a Roman writer of the third century, they are represented as being half naked; and the Briton Gildas, who wrote about three hundred years after, has drawn much the same picture of them. It was only in battle however, that they appear to have presented themselves in this barbarian fashion; and a similar custom prevailed also among the ancient Britons and Picts. But, though no particulars of the dress of the Irish, in those remote times, have reached us, enough may be collected from the accounts of a later period, when they had become more known to Europe, to satisfy us that the Milesian lord of the rath and the plebeian of the hovel had as little advanced on the scale of civilization in their dress as in their dwellings; and that, while the latter was most probably clothed, like the lower order of Britons, in sheepskin, the chief himself wore the short woollen mantle, such as was customary, at a later period, among his countrymen, and which, according to some authorities, reached no farther than the elbows; leaving, like the Rheno, or short mantle of the ancient Germans, the remainder of the body entirely naked. There is reason to believe, however, that at that time, as well as subsequently, they may have worn coverings for the thighs and legs, or at least that sort of petticoat, or fallin, as it was called, which is known to have been worn, as well as the braccæ, by the Irish, in the time of Giraldus Cambrensis. Į Such having been the rude state of the ancient Irish, within any range of time to which our knowledge of them extends, it remains to be asked, to whom then, to what race or period, could have belonged those relics of an age of comparative refinement, those curious and costly ornaments of dress, some of the purest gold, elaborately wrought, and others of silver, which have been discovered, from time to time, in different parts of Ireland, having been dug up out of fields and bogs where they must have lain hidden for ages?|| Nor is it only of ornaments for the person that these precious remains consist; as there are found also among them instruments supposed to have been connected with religious worship, which are said to be of the finest gold, without any alloy, and to have, some of them, handles of silver, chased with plated gold. In like manner, a variety of swords and other weapons* have been discovered, the former of which would seem to have been fabricated before iron had been brought into use for such purposes, as they are all of a mixed metal, chiefly copper, admitting of a remarkably high polish, and of a temper to carry a very sharp edge. To attempt to reconcile, even on the grounds already suggested, of the anomolous character of the people,-the civilized tastes, the skill of metallurgy, the forms of worship, which these various articles, in their several uses, imply, with such a state of things as prevailed in Ireland during the first ages of Christianity, appears altogether impossible; and the sole solution of this and other such contradictions, in the ancient history of the Irish, is that, at the time when they first became known to the rest of Europe, they had been long retrograding in civilization; that, whether from the inroads of rude northern tribes, or the slowly demoralizing effects of their own political institutions, they had fallen, like other once civilized nations, into eclipse; and though, with true Celtic perseverance, still clinging to their old laws and usages, their Assemblies at Tara, their Colleges of Bards, the Great Psalter of their Antiquaries, yet preserving of the ancient fabric little more than the shell, and, amidst all these skeletons of a bygone civilization, sinking fast into barbarism. This view of the matter seems so remarkably confirmed by that interval of ignorance, and even oblivion, as to the state and fortunes of Ireland, which succeeded to the times of the geographer Pytheas, of Eratosthenes, and the Tyrian authorities of Ptolemy. By all these, and more especially the latter, the position and localities of that island appear to have been far better known than by Strabo or any of the later Greek authorities,t-a circumstance to be explained only by the supposition that those ties of intercourse, whether commercial or religious, which the Irish once maintained, it is clear, with other nations, had during this interval been interrupted, and all the light that had flowed from those sources withdrawn. Through a nearly similar course of retrogradation we shall find them again doomed to pass, after their long and dark suffering under the yoke of the Danes, when, exhausted not more by this scourge than by their own internal dissensions, they sunk from the eminent station they had so long held in the eyes of Europe, and fell helplessly into that state of abasement, and almost barbarism, in which their handful of English conquerors found them. In the state of society which prevailed in Ireland, in the middle ages, when it differed but little, probably, from that of the period we are now considering, an eminent historian has discovered some points of resemblance to the picture represented to us of the Homeric age of Greece; and it is certain that the style of living, as described by Homer, in the palace of Ulysses, the riot and revel in the great hall, which was the scene of the cooking as well as of the feasting,-the supposed beggar admitted of the party, and, not least, the dunghill lying in the path from the court-gate to the door, might all find a paralell in the mansions of Irish chieftains, even to a later period than that assigned by the historian. Among the numerous other vestiges still remaining of an age of civilization in Ireland, far anterior to any period with which her history makes us acquainted, should not be forgotten those extraordinary coal-works of Ballycastle, on the coast of Antrim, which are pronounced to have been wrought in times beyond even the reach of tradition, and which a writer, by no means indulgent to the claims of Irish antiquities, conjectures, from the "marks of ancient operations" which they exhibit, to have been the work of some of the very earliest colonists of the country. The last resource with certain theorists, respect • "One circumstance as to the swords seems to be decisive :-they are as exactly and as minutely to every apparent mark the same with the swords of Sir W. Hamilton's collection, now in the British Museum, as if they came out of the same armory. The former found in the field of Cannæ are said to be Carthagenian; these, therefore, by parity of reasoning may likewise be said to have been of the same people. Governor Pownal's Account of some Irish Antiquities to the Society of Antiquarians, 1774. "What makes these brazen swords such a valuable remnant to the Irish antiquarian is, they serve to corroborate the opinion that the Phoenicians once had footing in this kingdom."-Campbell's Philosoph. Survey of the South of Ireland. † Pytheam præterea increpat Strabo ut mendacem, qui Hiberniam ac Uxisaman (Ushant) ad occidentum ponit a Gallia cum hæc omnia, ait ad Septentrionem vergant. Itaque veteres geographi Hiberniæ situm definiunt melius quam scriptores seculi aurei Augusti, Himilco et Phoenices melius quam Græci vel Romani! Rer. Script. Hib. prol. i. xii. 1 Mitford, History of Greece, vol. i. Odyss. lib. vii. "The antiquity of this work is pretty evident from hence, that there does not remain the most remote tradition of it in the country; but it is still more strongly demonstrated from a natural process which has taken place since its formation: for the sides and pillars were found covered with sparry incrustations, which the present workmen do not observe to be deposited in any definite portion of time."-Rev. W. Hamil· ton's Letters concerning the Coast of Antrim. "The superior intelligence of this people (the Damnii or Danaans) and of the Clanna Rhoboig, considered with Tacitus's account of the trade of Ireland, induce me to suppose that the coal-works at Ballycastle, on the northern coast, which exhibit marks of ancient operations, had been worked by either or both."Wood's Inquiry into the Primitive Inhabitants of Ireland. The following evidence on this subject is worthy of attention:-"If we may judge from the number of ancient mine excavations which are still visible in almost every part of Ireland, it would appear that an |