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times in the manners of Ireland.* Then perhaps he will be more 

 disposed to receive with favour those evidences of early civilization 

 which are now to be advanced, and if that civihzation shall appear 

 much attributable to Eastern intercourse, all must admit the necessity 

 of dwelling so long upon this first Preliminary Proposition. 



* How many vouchers of orientalism even at this day survive in Ireland. The " God 

 save you," " God save all here," which are the ordinary ejaculations at an Irish meeting, as 

 well as those of " God bless you," " God be with you," at parting, cannot but remind the 

 hearer of the " God be gracious to thee my son," and other similar phrases of salutation and 

 benediction so peculiar to the East. The hand joined in hand so often recorded in Scripture, 

 as the seal of contract; the May fires, (which Mr. Maurice says are celebrated on the same day 

 in India,) and those on St. John's eve, with the incidental exercises of leaping through the 

 flame, and the various instances of veneration for that element so curiously coinciding with 

 those practices at the feast of fire, as mentioned by Sonnerat. — (Travels, vol. 1. p. 154.) The 

 feastings and cries at funerals ; the partiality for the numbers even evinced in the churches of 

 Glendaloch, Clonmacnois, Loughderg, &c., in the altars at Clonfert, Holy Cross, &c., and 

 innumerable other instances in Ireland, so deducible from oriental prejudice; to which, perhaps, 

 we may be allowed to add, the free and liberal hospitality recorded in the Old Testament, 

 recommended in the New, and still celebrated by every Eastern tourist ; that hospitality which 

 the Hindoos so beautifully inculcate by the proverb, " the tree does not withdraw its shade 

 even from the woodcutter," and which, perhaps, could in its fulness only be once met with in 

 Ireland ; these, and various other parallel customs, some of which shall be noticed hereafter, 

 eeem clearly to demonstrate that Asia was the immediate cradle of the Irish people. 



