82 



that the Hebrides were the Hyperborean country of Diodorus ; but 

 when the position of the place referred to is considered " to the North 

 over against Gaul," its size " not inferior to Sicily/' the excellent 

 quality of the land (solum optimum ac fructuosum,) the alleged sun 

 worship, of which there are so many monuments over the face of 

 the country, the remarkable round temple used for his worship, so un- 

 questionably coinciding with the round towers hereafter mentioned, 

 and which Giraldus Cambrensis considered of such remote antiquity, 

 that he even gives credit* to the tradition of some of them being over- 

 whelmed under Lough Neagh, by the inundation (herein-before re- 

 ferred to the year A. D. 63,) the musicians on the national instru- 

 strument, (" civium plerique citharistae,") the language (" Lingua 

 Hyperboreis propria,") all those concurring circumstances give consi- 

 derable weight to the opinion, that the island alluded to must have 

 been Ireland ; to which may be added the testimony of Saint Patrick 

 himself, in the confession which he wrote by way of epistle to the 

 Irish, and whose genuineness, admitted even by Innes,-t" shall be 

 asserted in the proper place4 " For that sun," says the apostle of 

 Ireland, " which we behold is ordained by the will of God to rise 

 daily for us, but never shall it rule nor shall its splendour endure, but 

 all those who adore it shall in misery and wretchedness descend into 

 punishment."§ 



This very sun worship, so simple and exalted in comparison 

 with the heathen rites that polluted the banks of the Tiber and the 

 Ilyssus, is alike the confirmation and the consequence of such an 

 early Phoenician colonization, as Vossius says, introduced the same 



• Post, fifth section of this Period. f Critical Essay, vol. 2. p. 517. 



i Post, Period ii. section 4. 



§ "Nam sol iste, quem videmus, Deo jubente propter nos quotidie oritur, sed nunquam 

 regnabit neque permanebit splendor ejus, sed et omnes qui adorant eum in pcenam miseri 

 male devenient."— Confess, p. 22. 



