PREFACE. ix 



That many faults will be found in the execution of this work, I am fully 

 sensible. I have little concerned myself 'with the graces of style, beyond the 

 necessary attention to clearness ; and my object being to illustrate as much as 

 possible the progress of art in the country, I was never deterred from becoming 

 discursive by the dread of being deemed wanting in order and consecutiveness. 

 In short, for its various imperfections, and for my own incompetency to do 

 better, I can truly aver that I would not have undertaken it, however necessary, 

 at this eleventh hour of the existence of our antiquities, if I had seen any pro- 

 bability that a more able hand was disposed to accomplish it. That I have 

 been able to throw some considerable light on the hitherto neglected anti- 

 quities of -my country, and to remove the very thin veil which involved the 

 origin of her Round Towers in mystery, will, I fondly hope, be the opinion of 

 the learned. I have not, however, any very sanguine expectations that either 

 the evidences or arguments which I have adduced, or those which I have still 

 to submit to my readers, will have any very immediate effect on the great 

 majority of the middle classes of the Irish people (for the lower or agricultural 

 classes have no ideas upon the subject but the true ones) in changing their 

 opinions as to their indefinite antiquity and Pagan uses. Among these such 

 opinions have assumed the form of a sentiment almost religious, and my dry 

 facts have too little poetry in them to reach the judgment through the medium 

 of the imagination. Neither do I anticipate that I shall be able to convince all 

 those who have written recently in support of those erroneous, but popular 

 theories, though I expect to satisfy the more intelligent and candid of my anta- 

 gonists of their errors, as for example, my friends the members of the South 

 Munster Society of Antiquaries, most of whom, I have reason to suspect, are more 

 than half gained over already. 



I have but one word to add now respecting the illustrations to this work. 

 It will be seen that they make but slight pretensions to the character of works 



VOL. xx. b 



