rather to the character of Numa, by his wisdom and learning tamed 

 the wild passions of his subjects, and reduced them to a just and gen- 

 tle disposition ; remote posterity have at least conceded him a com- 

 memorating bust between those of Moses and Alfred in the series of 

 legislators that adorns the dome of the Irish courts of justice. Neither 

 must the history linger to detail the interesting visit of the Picts,* on 

 which Wintown in his " Cronykil" so fully expatiates; nor the league 

 of consanguinity and friendship which linked that unconquered 

 people with Ireland ; nor yet to appropriate to that country the revela- 

 tions of Plato's Atalantis,-f- nor even to identify the classic wander- 

 ings of Abaris, the recorded:!", friend and instructor of Pythagoras, 

 however strikingly the description of him by Himerius,§ his dress, 

 his manners, his country, and his philosophy, may accord with those of 

 Ireland. " Powerfully as those, and many other prominent passages of 

 the Irish annals, might be supported by evidence within the limits pre- 

 scribed for this Essay, they are yet necessarily, though reluctantl}', 

 consigned to other illustration, and the inquiry confined to the vindica-' 

 tion of but the one paramount event alluded to, from which the con- 

 clusions of a very early civilization in Ireland are so obviously deduci- 

 ble, that it almost seems the palladium of her literary and scientific 

 pretensions. The historical assertion thus relied on, is, that the Phoe- 



* Vide Bede's Eccl. Hist. lib. i. c. 1. 



t Vide 1 O'Conor, Rer. Hib. Script. Proleg. Pars i. p. 10. J By Suidas in vit. Pythag. 



§ Ex oral, ad Ursicium cited in full 3 Vail. Coll. de Reb. Hib. Pref. p. cxiii. See Carte's Gen. 

 Hist, of Eng. vol. i. p. 52, &c. for an unintended confirmation of the above opinion. See also 

 Diodorus Siculus in his description of the Hyperborean island {citud post. Per. 1. § 3.) and its 

 obvious applicability to Ireland, together with his express declaration, that it was from that 

 island Abaris passed into Greece. " Clruvrai Ss *«( ix. t«» Xm^oo^my aS«ji» m mi EXA«S« x«t«»- 



TtiTunx, TO vttXaKii, »}»tra(TM rvti ^joj AijXfot/; ivitiiiti ti kxi <rvyyiiua.\." Bibl. Hist. lib. 2. p. 159, 

 while Marcianus Heracleota, in his " Periplus," mentions that Ireland " loufjxa," — .rt^n-. 

 ^il^iTxi «T» fit> rai atxjay tu vTrt^xtifiaa y,xi tcxXcvfitta vTri^/ii^ia axiaia." 



VOL. XVI. C 



