the Uest, the quiet habitation of sanctity and literature. If you 

 could give a history, though imperfect, of the Irish nation from its 

 conversion to Christianity to the invasion from England, you would 

 amplify knowledge with new views and new objects.'"* 



This impressive recommendation, however, has affected Httle hi- 

 therto, and the long neglect of the admonition is now proclaimed as 

 a constructive act of abdication of royalties too rashl}^ assumed. If 

 (it is tauntingly asked) if Ireland was once the nurse of heroes and 

 philosophers and poets, " why has she for so many ages groaned in 

 servitude and groped in ignorance ? "-f If she has been what a few 

 would fain represent her, where ai'e the evidences of her early civili- 

 zation, the records of her science, the monuments of her arts, the spe- 

 cimens of her composition ? — The ruin of empires should furnish too 

 affecting a response. Cities, that once rung with the bustle of multi- 

 tudes, are empty and voiceless ; sea-ports, on whose quays the com- 

 merce of the old world has been transacted, are deserted and solitary. 

 " Atque ubi portus erat, siccum nunc littus et horti ! " Countries, 

 that illumined antiquity with the brightest examples of Pagan a irtue, 

 are now tenanted by the bigot and the slave ! 



What is Babylon, "the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the 

 Chaldees' excellency ! "J Where are her squares — her walls — her 

 gardens — her towers — her bridges .'* The traveller marvels at which 

 side of the Euphrates these stupendous works were erected ! " Her 

 cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness ; a land wherein 

 no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby."§ 

 Where is "Nineveh, that great city? "II— Did it stand on the 

 Euphrates or the Tigris ? Who could identify in the dry and barren 

 solitudes of modern Palestine those features which the inspired wri- 



* Boswell's life of Johnson, ad. Ann. 1777. 



t Campbell's Strictures on the Eccl. and Lit. Ant. of Ireland, p. 8. 

 t Isaiah, xni. 9. § Jerem. u. 43. |1 Jonah, it. 4. 



