3(3 Mr. PETBIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



pending altogether, as I shall hereafter shew, on the position of the Tower with 

 reference to the church with which it was originally connected. The fact, there- 

 fore, that the Magians always advanced from the west side to worship the fire, 

 does not furnish an argument to prove, that the Irish Towers were fire-temples. 



Dr. Lanigan next says, that he sees no reason to deny that the Round Towers 

 existed before Christianity, and that their style proves them very ancient. To 

 this I reply, that I see every reason to deny that they did so, for not the 

 slightest evidence has ever been adduced to prove, that the Irish were ac- 

 quainted with the art of building with lime cement before they received the 

 Christian faith ; and the architecture or masonry of the towers and that of the 

 ancient churches erected before the twelfth century, of which some hundreds 

 still exist, is the same in every respect, as I shall hereafter shew. 



After this, he says, it is not universally true that the Towers are found near 

 old churches; but in this he also errs, as shall be shewn in the proper place : 

 they are, without a single exception, found near old churches, or where churches 

 are known to have existed. 



Finally, he argues that it was the policy of the Christians to build their 

 churches near the ancient fire-temples, and that the Round Towers, having 

 been built in towns, or villages of some note, required churches in Christian 

 times. Why, then, I may ask, are not churches found near the Pagan altars 

 or cromleacs, which, Vallancey states, were also dedicated to the sun? But, 

 in truth, if the Doctor, who was so well acquainted with the Acta Sancto- 

 rum Hibernice, had reflected a little before he allowed himself to be carried 

 away by his zeal in support of a favourite theory, he would have been 

 ashamed to make this assertion; for he must have known, that so far from 

 the churches adjacent to Round Towers having been built in places in which, 

 previously to the introduction of Christianity, there had been " towns or vil- 

 lages of note," they were, in most instances, erected in the most desolate and 

 unfrequented places that could be found ; as the words " Cluain" and " Disert," 

 prefixed so generally to their names, sufficiently indicate, and the lives of their 

 founders incontestibly prove. It was, in fact, the monasteries that usually 

 gave birth to the towns, not the towns to the monasteries ; and the destruction 

 which fell upon the primitive establishments has, in most instances, been fol- 

 lowed by the decline of these, their constant appendages. 



