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to the period which has been assigned." Here we are obhged to 

 differ from the learned Doctor, for we think in almost every page we 

 can discover palpable proofs of modern fabrication, and are well 

 assured that they cannot be authenticated by a single contemporary 

 witness. 



In the dissertation on the Era of Ossian annexed to his poems, 

 Macpherson does not pretend to any thing like proof or evidence of 

 their original date. His statements in prose are as loose and general 

 as his descriptions in poetry. They have neither distinctness nor 

 individuality ; they are as intangible as his ghosts, and when you 

 approach them they fall into pieces and vanish away. He speaks of 

 a persecution of the Druids that took place in the days of Fingal, but 

 supports it by no authority ; of the Culdees ; of the exploits of Fingal 

 when a youth, against Caracul, the king of the world ; and of Ossian 

 when an old man, having seen " the Christians whom the persecution 

 under Diocletian had driven beyond the pale of the Roman Empire." 

 All this is mere invention without even the merit of plausibility. He 

 accounts for the absence of religious ideas, by saying that "under 

 the cloud of public hate, all that had any knowledge of the religion 

 of the Druids became extinct, and the nation fell into the last 

 degree of ignorance of their rites and ceremonies." Hence, even the 

 bards, whom he describes as an inferior order of Druids, make no 

 allusion to them in their poems. That a whole people should lose all 

 knowledge of their peculiar religious rites and ceremonies in the 

 course of one generation, is one of the most monstrous suppositions 

 on record. It is also in direct contradiction to the fact, that the 

 bards were the historians of their country. Wherefore should some 

 of the most important topics which employ the pen of history be 

 prohibited or left unnoticed ? Whatever reason there might be for 



